Lethbridge Collegiate Institute - Academics

Academics

From Monday to Thursday, the school operates from 7:55 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon with five 69 minute classes. Grade ten, eleven and twelve students have four different modules with one doubled on each day of the week (e.g. module 3 is doubled on Wednesday). On Fridays, classes begin slightly later, running from 7:55 to 12:38 with four 62 minute classes and no lunch period. From Monday to Thursday, the lunch period begins at 11:49. The peculiar times are partly due to the district's school busses, which are also needed for elementary and middle schools which have later start and end times.

In preparation for Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) at the end of the year, grade nine students operate on a similar system to that of the local middle schools.c All courses run from September until June with the exception of option courses which are semestered. This is contrary to grades ten through twelve, where nearly all classes are semester long and students receive 5 credits per course. 100 credits are needed to graduate, per Alberta Learning requirements. Each credit signifies approximately 125 hours of classroom instruction. Of their final sixteen high school modules (4 in grade eleven and 4 in grade twelve), students are permitted to take three spare modules with a general restriction of one per year in grade eleven and one per semester in grade twelve.

Due to the high enrollment, several teachers have had their classrooms segregated from their main department. In recent years, the teachers were left without classrooms and had to make use of whatever rooms were available during a particular module. As a result, the building is now much less departmentalized than was originally planned.

Numerous scholarships are offered annually for students. For some students, applying for a scholarship is not necessary; grade 11 or 12 students with an overall average above 80% are eligible to receive $400 via Rutherford Scholarships. Entry into the National Honor Society is also offered to them, requiring students to complete a minimum of 10 hours community service over the course of the year. The Society participates in directing annual functions such as "Parent-Teacher Evening". In the community, the group assists at the Chinook Regional Hospital and at Salvation Army functions, such as bell ringing.

LCI students are encouraged to remain within the city for their post-secondary students and attend the University of Lethbridge by representatives from that school. Accordingly, it is easier for local students to be rewarded with scholarships, and several are only available for students who attended high school in Southern Alberta. A high number of students also go on to attend the Universities of Calgary and Alberta, as well as Lethbridge College. In a 2009 Fraser Institute report, which was conducted from the previous school year, LCI was ranked 162nd among Alberta high school schools, down significantly from a rank of 102nd in the previous 5 years. More promising is the fact that the number of students dropping out of school before completion has steadily decreased, on average, provincewide. While data is not available for individual institutions, the number of students completing school has also increased districtwide.