Robert William Pickton repeated Grade 2 and attended special classes until he left school some time after September 1964, an expert witness in student assessment and achievement testified Wednesday.

Robert William Pickton is on trial for the deaths of six women who went missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
(Jane Wolsak/Canadian Press)

Gordon Cochrane gave a detailed interpretation of Pickton's school record and standardized test scores at the B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster.

Pickton, a pig farmer, is on trial for the deaths of six women who went missing between 1997 and 2001 — Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Georgina Papin.

He is to face a second trial later on an additional 20 counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Pickton, who began school in Grade 1 in the mid-1950s, spent less than a decade in the Coquitlam school system, said Cochrane, a defence witness.

Pickton had unsatisfactory marks in reading, language and arithmetic in Grade 2, and was assessed as performing at the same level as a Grade 1 student while studying Grade 3, Cochrane said.

By the end of his ninth year in school Pickton's achievement was at a Grade 5 level, Cochrane said.
  
"The consistency over time of standard measures and the fact he was placed in special education classes implies that in relation to his peers he is not doing as well as other students," Cochrane said.

Under cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie, Cochrane agreed that the year 1964 was the last for which records were available, but it didn't mean for certain that Pickton left school permanently that year.
  
Petrie suggested that the record also showed Pickton was transferred to a secondary school for Grade 8.
  
Cochrane said that Pickton may have been in a high school "building" but that didn't mean he was in high school.

With files from the Canadian Press