The Fraser Institute has released its rankings of Ontario secondary schools, among them six secondary schools in North Bay and four located in the surrounding areas.
The Report Card on Ontario’s Secondary Schools 2019 ranks 738 anglophone and francophone public and Catholic schools (and a small number of independent schools) based on nine academic indicators derived from annual provincewide reading, writing and math tests.
Chippewa leads the way (and is deemed the only of the six North Bay schools to be trending upwards) with a rank for 2017-18 of 276. St. Joseph – Scollard Hall and West Ferris tied at 344th. Algonquin placed 477th, Widdifield 516th and Odyssée 726th out of 738.
Sturgeon Falls secondary schools Franco-Cité and Northern appear in the rankings at 443 and 689 of 738, respectively. Mattawa’s FJ McElligott is ranked 678 and South River’s Almaguin Highlands 610th.
The Fraser Institute touts its rankings as the most accessible tool for parents to compare the academic performance of the province’s schools.
“The Report Card offers parents information they can’t easily get anywhere else, about how their child’s school performs over time and compares to other schools in Ontario,” said Angela MacLeod, a senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute.
The Fraser Institute reports, “Contrary to common misconceptions, the data suggest every school is capable of improvement regardless of type, location and student characteristics.
“For example, Stamford Collegiate Secondary School in Niagara Falls is the second-fastest improving school in the province (rising from a score of 3.2 out of 10 in 2014 to 5.3 in 2018) despite 55 per cent of students having special needs.
“Over the same period, St. Patrick’s High School in Ottawa, with a 61 per cent English-as-a-second-language (ESL) population and 17 per cent of students having special needs, improved its score from 4.6 to 6.4.”
MacLeod said, “We often hear excuses in Ontario that schools can’t improve student performance because of the communities and students they serve, but the evidence suggests otherwise.”
For the complete results on all ranked schools and to compare the performance of different schools, visit www.compareschoolrankings.org.
The Fraser Institute identifies itself as an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute’s independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org for more.
