Am-Can Business & Tech School
Redefining High School Education in Canada
Ontario private secondary school, Vaughan · OSSD credits, Grades 9 to 12
This school has no set class times, so attendance is not measured by whether you were sitting somewhere at a particular hour. It is measured by whether you completed the work the week required.
Online and in class are the same course, and attendance is measured the same way in both: by the four weekly milestones. There is no separate attendance rule for in class students, and physical presence at the campus is never marked.
This is deliberate. A course that required you to be physically present would stop being an online learning course under the Ministry's PPM 167, and in class students would no longer earn the two online learning credits Ontario requires for graduation. Measuring milestones rather than presence is what protects that for everyone.
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The school runs six fixed sessions a year. It does not operate continuous intake. Courses do not start on demand and you cannot join a session part way through.
You apply for a named session, and your course begins and ends on the published dates for that session. You take one course per session, which is a maximum of six credits a year at this school.
Intake is the same in both formats. The six session dates, the six study weeks and the 110 hours are identical whether you study online or in class. The only format difference is which courses are available: every course runs online in every session, while in class a selection runs each session, and you see which ones, with the seats remaining, while you enrol.
Each session is six study weeks and 110 scheduled hours: 20 hours a week in weeks one to five, and 10 hours in week six, which is the final evaluation week.
There are no scheduled class times in either format. Nothing requires you to be online, or at the campus, at a set hour. Your portal activity is recorded whenever it occurs, wherever you are sitting.
Attendance is therefore defined as the completion of four milestones each study week. Completing them on time is what it means to attend this school.
The school schedules no live classes. Optional drop in sessions may be offered from time to time. Attending one is never required and never affects your mark, in either direction.
Attendance and participation counts towards your final mark: 15 per cent in Grades 9 and 10, and 10 per cent in Grades 11 and 12.
Work through the unit materials released for that week. This is recorded automatically by the portal.
Post your response to the teacher's discussion question in the cohort forum for that week.
Respond to classmates' posts in that same forum.
Complete the assignment or evaluation set for that week.
A session schedules 24 milestones, four in each of six study weeks.
A milestone is not the same size every week, because week six is the shorter evaluation week.
| Scheduled hours | Milestones | Hours per milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Each week, weeks 1 to 5 | 20 | 4 | 5 hours |
| Week 6, final evaluation week | 10 | 4 | 2.5 hours |
| Whole session | 110 | 24 | 4.6 hours on average |
So in weeks one to five a single milestone represents about five scheduled hours of work, roughly a day. In week six each represents about two and a half.
Completion is recorded per student, per week, in the school's student information system, and that record is available for inspection.
Your session schedules 24 milestones, four in each of six study weeks. Your attendance level depends on how many of those 24 you completed on time.
The numbers below are counts of milestones, not hours and not days. One milestone is about five scheduled hours in weeks one to five, and about two and a half in week six. Levels 1 to 4 are the Ontario achievement levels, where 4 is the highest. R means the expectation has not been met.
| Milestones completed on time | Milestones missed | Attendance level |
|---|---|---|
| 24 or 23 of the 24 | None, or one | Level 4 |
| 22 of the 24 | Two | Level 3 |
| 21 of the 24 | Three | Level 2 |
| 20 of the 24 | Four | Level 1 |
| 19 or fewer of the 24 | Five or more | R |
The pattern is deliberate. Missing one milestone across a whole session costs you nothing at all. Missing five puts the credit itself at risk. Between those two, each missed milestone costs you one level.
A worked example. There are 24 milestones in your session. You complete 21 of them on time and miss three. Your attendance level is 2. Attendance and participation is worth 15 per cent of your final mark in Grades 9 and 10, and 10 per cent in Grades 11 and 12, so that level feeds into your mark alongside your classroom work and your final evaluation.
Where the school excuses a milestone, for example for illness or a family emergency supported by an explanation from you or your parent or guardian, that milestone is removed from both the count and the total before your completion rate is worked out. You are not penalised for something the school has accepted.
24 milestones scheduled. You completed 22. One was excused. Your rate is 22 divided by 23, not 22 divided by 24, which is 95.7 per cent.
Tell your teacher as early as you can. A milestone cannot be excused retrospectively once the session has closed.
Twenty of the 110 hours in every course are your own study away from the screen. You record these in a weekly learning log, submitted each week and reviewed by your teacher.
The learning log is not a milestone. It is the record of your offline hours. Not submitting it does not reduce your milestone count, but your teacher will ask for it, and it is the evidence that the offline portion of the course was done.
Where a statutory holiday falls inside a study week, that week's scheduled hours are reduced accordingly rather than being made up. A week in weeks one to five carries 20 scheduled hours; week six carries 10.
Family Day falls inside study week six of Session 3, which is a 10 hour week rather than a 20 hour one. Session 4 spans seven calendar weeks because March Break falls inside it, and still delivers six study weeks and the full 110 hours.
Because milestones are weekly, the school knows within days rather than weeks. Nobody is left to drift quietly and then be told at the end that the credit is gone.
The follow up procedure is a four stage escalation with stated timelines. It begins with contact from your assigned teacher within two school days of a missed milestone, and escalates through the school to the Principal. Your parent or guardian is contacted where you are under 18. The timelines for the later stages are set out in sections A7, A8 and D3 of the School Course Calendar.
The point of contact is to get you back on track, not to build a case against you. Answer it. A missed milestone that you tell us about is very often an excused one.
In class study at Am-Can means supervised study of the same online course, in a classroom or the computer room at the Vaughan campus, with school staff present to supervise and assist. It does not mean scheduled teacher-led classes.
Campus attendance is a facility, not a requirement, and is never marked. A student in the in person format who studies from home on a given day is not recorded absent and loses no mark.
School computers meet the minimum system requirements, so a student in the in class format does not need to provide their own equipment.
Every credit at this school counts as an online learning credit in either format.
Your attendance is reported twice. At the mid session report card, against the 12 milestones scheduled to that point. At the final report card, against all 24.
Each report card shows the milestones scheduled, the milestones completed, any excused, and your completion rate.
Am-Can Business & Tech School, Unit B, 99 Sante Drive, Vaughan, Ontario L4K 3C4. Telephone 905-326-0045, answered 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday.