Alberta students circulating petition for cancellation of diploma exams

Students and supporters rally at the Alberta legislature to protest the province’s decision to order striking teachers back to work, in Edmonton on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

A petition of students who say Grade 12 diploma exams should be cancelled in the spring to ensure fairness among full-year students affected by the October teachers’ strike is circulating in some Alberta high schools.

In October 2025, the Alberta government cancelled diploma exams scheduled for January due to a three-week teachers’ strike. Grade 9 provincial achievement tests were also cancelled.

Students who did not write diploma exams in January were told they were able to opt back into writing them in April or June.

“Cancelling second semester diploma exams would ensure equal treatment for all Alberta students,” reads the petition. “First semester students already received relief because of lost instructional time and disruptions.”

This petition has so far amassed nearly 5,000 signatures. CTV News Edmonton has reached out to its organizer but did not immediately hear back.

“Our teachers are rushing to complete the course material because the semester started late, and students are being pushed through the excessive workload at a pace that does not support real learning,” one person wrote in the comment section of the petition.

Another person wrote that full-year courses were the main point of contention for many students.

Udayjot Sandhu, a Grade 12 student at Strathcona High School in Edmonton, found the petition through a friend on Instagram while preparing his university admissions and felt strongly about circulating it.

“I’m going to be forced to submit a grade competing with people who didn’t even have to write a final,” he said in an interview Thursday.

Diploma exams, he explained, can be a burden on many young Albertans looking to graduate strong ahead of post-secondary careers.

The standardized assessments are worth 30 per cent of a student’s final grade in certain subjects. In Sandhu’s case, that’s Math 30-1, or Calculus, which he needs to submit for a potential undergraduate degree in engineering at the University of Alberta.

Because his course is full-year, he says he joins many students who lost nearly a month of instructional time because of the strike but will still have to recover by the spring to write an exam their single-semester peers were able to avoid.

He says he’s spoken to the Alberta education ministry and was told students writing exams in the spring were not affected by the teachers’ strike.

And while he acknowledges there may be students who were relying on January diploma exams to boost their grades, he says his experience is that the exams often cause grades to drop.

“There might be a trade off … (but) I have two older sisters, and I think in only one or two of their classes, has the diploma actually brought up their grades.”

The petition has garnered signatures from students across the province, from Calgary to Fort McMurray.

In a brief statement to CTV News Edmonton, the education ministry said no petitions had been brought forward and diploma exams will not be cancelled.