SWAMPSCOTT — The graduation rate remains high and 94 percent of students are electing to continue their education in some way after graduating high school.
According to the Swampscott High School Principal Dennis Kohut, his students continue to do well overall, planning to continue their education post-graduation, while the dropout rate remains very small.
“I think just looking at these numbers, it really speaks to the resiliency of these kids and our staff, where the pandemic school was really hard and our students still continue to have strong results academically,” said Kohut at the last School Committee meeting. “I am tremendously proud of our kids and our faculty and staff.”
Ninety four percent of SHS graduates will be continuing their education at two-year schools, four-year colleges or trade institutions, said Emily Zotto, director of school counseling. Some of the graduates have committed to college or university but have decided to take a year off to do internships or volunteer work.
“It does include mostly college plans, but also a student going into the Air Force whose intention is to pursue a nursing career, in addition to a student who is taking a gap year and will participate in a program through the YMCA in the Rocky Mountains,” Zotto said.
She said the students survey results show that they are able to use social-emotional learning skills, take ownership of themselves and their self awareness and literacy across the board.
The SHS Class of 2022 is planning to attend close to 100 different colleges and universities. The graduates are interested in business communications, biological science, international affairs, nursing, engineering, literature, data analysis, economics, and aviation management, Zotto said.
Swampscott students’ Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores remain consistently high, said Zotto. With an average score of 611 for English evidence-based reading and writing and 600 points for Math, SHS’s mean combined result of 1211 is well above the national average and higher than an average score for Massachusetts schools.
Zotto said that 70 percent of colleges this year still continue with the test optional policy introduced in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We know through speaking with colleges, universities, and collaborating with test prep companies, that the standardized test is much lower in terms of application importance, than is a counselor evaluation, teacher recommendations, and certainly the academic transcript, which is a much stronger representation of the students ability to do the work,” Zotto said.
The SHS’ dropout rate remains well below state average at around 0.01 percent of total student population.
Alena Kuzub can be reached at [email protected].
