Parents, alumni worried changes to VSB program will harm academic excellence

Parents and alumni of a long-running Vancouver school board educational program are upset with unexpected changes made, without consultation, after the application process for the 2023 school year had already started.

Changes to the application process for the University Transition Program (UTP) were announced to parents in a letter on Dec. 9, 2022, nearly three months after the opening information night and two months after the date set for student assessments, which were delayed. Both the information session and the assessment are mandatory parts of the program application.

A notice on the UTP application website said only that the deadline for referrals was extended to March 13 and that more information “will follow in the weeks to come.”

Parents and alumni said the lack of transparency around the changes was a bigger concern than the changes themselves.

“Two days before the second information session I noticed on the website that it said the information session had been cancelled,” said James Dai, a UTP alumni who was planning on taking his daughter to the second information session and has started a campaign to roll back changes to the program until more consultation can take place.