Teaching+of+the+Literacy+Test

For the past month, I have been observing and teaching in two grade 10 applied classes in a high school in Hamilton. The school has made its mission to teach the literacy test up until the literacy test. While I do understand that this is an initiative to improve the passing rate within the school, I also so see just bored and unmotivated the kids really are. They are forced to do tedious tasks such as identifying verbs, nouns, writing simple sentences and paragraphs on a day to day basis. My MT does try to make it interesting for them by incorporating material which might make it more interesting for them such as interesting sentences or funny pictures but this only seems to go so far.

The kids have trouble merely concentrating, not to mention doing the assigned work. A lot of the time there has to be a lot of incentive to just get them to come to class. The school has actually started an initiative in which they offer a granola bar and a juice to each student who shows up on time within the grade 10 applied classes. Even with this in place however, a lot of them are still skipping class on a regular basis. They simply do not care about passing the class nor the test. The school's goal is to get only one person out of every applied class to pass, and that will surpass the passing rate from last year. However, so far this initiative seems to be failing. Is it that the school is setting the bar too low and not raising the standards high enough or simply that the students are not personally motivated? I just wonder how to get a class of this sort to get working and motivated? Is it even possible??