Secondary schools in rural and urban areas alike showed improvements
More than 80 Ontario high schools have shown improvements in math scores, according to the Fraser Institute’s annual report released Sunday.
This year’s report card finds that 37 high schools in Ontario have shown statistically significant improvement over the last four years in Grade 9 academic math and 47 schools have improved in applied math.
Essex District High School in Essex, Ont. is just one of those schools, which improved its average score from 2.6 out of 4 in 2013 to 3 in 2017.
But the improving schools are all across Ontario in rural and urban areas. The fastest-improving school in academic math is Stayner Collegiate Institute near Collingwood, and for applied math C.W. Jeffreys Collegiate Institute in Toronto’s Jane and Finch area.
“If struggling schools want to improve math results, they can find out what works for improving schools and, wherever possible, adopt these proven methods,” director of school performance studies at the Fraser Institute, Peter Cowley, said in a press release. “These schools are proof that no one city and no one type of student or socioeconomic situation has a monopoly on improvement—it’s possible for every school to improve, whether in math or any other area of the curriculum.”
This year’s report card ranks 747 anglophone and francophone public and Catholic secondary schools and a small number of independent and First Nations schools on seven academic indicators based on results of annual province-wide Grade 9 math and Grade 10 literacy tests.
