The Awards for Excellence in Education - The Awards

About the Awards

Purpose

As an educator, you know that striving for excellence in education is a challenging pursuit. At the same time, you also know that you are performing one of Canada's most important tasks – the education of its children. Recognizing excellence in our educational community is important because:

It honours successful school teams and their commitment to teaching children.
It supports our strongly held belief that society values education.
It offers inspiration, motivation and hope to those who continue to seek academic success.
It identifies school teams who can share their knowledge, skills and experiences with others in order to benefit thousands more students.

How We Select the Top Performing Schools

We prepare a short list of the 30 top performing eligible schools in each of three categories of academic achievement, after a thorough analysis of the data upon which The Fraser Institute report cards are based. (The awards are not based on how a school ranks in the report card.)

Award Categories

The Improvement in Academics award is presented to the school team whose overall academic performance has experienced the fastest, most consistent improvement over the past five years.
Award for Excellence in Language Arts.
Award for Excellence in Math.
Award for Excellence in Science.

It is important to note that not all categories of academic achievement are awarded each year or in each province and that, in some instances, a single category is divided into two awards, one which recognizes elementary schools and one which recognizes secondary schools.

Award Prizes
During the awards celebration dinner, the winner is announced and receives:

a $3,000 cash prize
an engraved Silver Star award
a framed commemorative certificate

The runners-up receive:

a $1,000 cash prize
a framed commemorative certificate

Schools of Distinction receive:

an attractive commemorative certificate

Notification and Participation
We notify short-listed schools first by mail and then, by phone that they have qualified for an Award for Excellence in Education.

A school team’s principal must sign and return a Confirmation of Participation form by the deadline in order to confirm that his or her school team will accept the conditions of participation.

Conditions of Participation
Each school’s principal must accept the following conditions in order to participate in the Awards for Excellence in Education:

I will allow the school's name, my name and photographs of our representatives at the awards dinner to be used in news releases, publications, and this website in conjunction with the announcement and presentation of the awards.
If our school qualifies as a Finalist (one of the top two or three in the province):
- I, or another representative of my choosing, will attend the awards dinner with at least one other school representative. (Travel and accommodation costs for 2 people from Finalist schools will be covered by The W. Garfield Weston Foundation.)
  Without this confirmation the school team cannot receive the award.

Finalists
From the list of participating schools, three Finalists in each category will be determined.

They represent the schools with the highest scores in our calculations for the award categories.
They are notified in a second letter and phone call.
Of these three finalists, one is declared the winner in each category at the awards celebration dinner.
- Each winner receives $3000 in prize money and each runner-up receives $1000
A representative from a finalist school must be in attendance at the celebration dinner to receive the award and prize money.
These school teams are not selected nor nominated.

Schools of Distinction
School teams that are not Finalists are recognized as a School of Distinction.

They are notified, in advance of the celebration dinner, in a second letter and phone call.
Each of these school teams is presented with a commemorative certificate at the awards celebration dinner.
Due to the fact that Schools of Distinction do not have their travel costs covered, some can not attend due to the cost incurred to travel. In this case we will mail these schools their certificates after the date of the awards dinner.

The Awards Celebration Dinner
An awards celebration dinner is held in each province every year. It offers educators an enjoyable and memorable evening while celebrating their accomplishments.

Representatives of all participating school teams (Finalists and Schools of Distinction) are welcome at the champagne reception and the awards celebration dinner that follows.
Schools are invited to bring up to eight members of their team in Alberta and four members of their team in Ontario to attend this memorable event, at no cost.
Extra seats are usually, but not always, available for a fee. Please inquire to confirm.
This is a semi-formal event where business attire is appropriate.
The evening begins with a champagne reception, followed by dinner during which the winners in each category are announced.
Two representatives (max.) from Finalist schools will be asked to come up on stage to accept their awards and have their photos taken.
- Only the winner in each category will be asked to say a few words at the mic (5 minutes max.), so all Finalists should be prepared in the event they are announced as the winner to give a short speech.
Candid photos are taken during the champagne reception, and during dinner group photos are taken of Schools of Distinction and presentation photos are taken of the Finalist schools on stage. All of these will be available for downloading free of charge within a week of the awards dinner.
- A link to these images will be emailed to the principal when available.