But 10th percentile scores decline

Canada’s high school dropout rate has significantly declined over the past 20 years. The National Post summarized the results of three recent reports, including one from Statistics Canada that reported a declining high school dropout rate. For young adults aged 20-24, the rate was 8.5 per cent in 2009/2010, down about half from 20 years ago.

The Canadian high school dropout rate for adults aged 25-34 is 8 per cent, which compares favourably to an OECD average dropout rate of 20 per cent.

The third report, from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), measured the strength of school programs internationally. Despite doing well for average scores, Canadian schools didn’t do so well when it came to the 10th-percentile scores, which declined in many provinces over the past ten years. The Post pointed out that the highest provincial dropout rate, in Quebec, is twice as high as the lowest, in B.C.

Lastly, the dropout rate declined for First Nations aged 45-plus and those aged 35-44 among. The rate did not decline for those under the age of 35, which means a third of First Nation adults between the ages of 25-44 have no high school certification.

But critics say stats are misleading, are instead a “politically useful number”

Ontario’s Liberal government boasted of another increase in high school graduation rates Monday, but opposition critics warned the numbers aren’t telling the whole story.

That’s because the province is still using a five-year standard to measure graduation rates for its four-year high school program, even though Grade 13 was eliminated in Ontario in 2003.

The high school graduation rate was 77 per cent last year, up from 75 per cent the year before, said Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.

When questioned about the numbers, Wynne conceded the graduation rate included students who took five years to complete the four-year high school program.

“There are lots of kids who want to take courses that they can’t fit into their timetables, so they come back in that fifth year to do that, and I think that’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do,” she said.

“What we wouldn’t want to do is set up a situation where we weren’t counting those kids as graduating from high school, (because) it doesn’t make any sense.”

The opposition parties welcomed the improvement in the graduation rate, but questioned the validity of the numbers and the government’s methodology.

“The government hasn’t been totally forthcoming in some of the efforts they’ve been using in order to make it appear that things are better than they were in the past,” said Progressive Conservative critic Elizabeth Witmer.

On her first day in the legislature as leader of Ontario’s New Democrats, Andrea Horwath said she was worried the numbers were designed to make graduation rates look better than they actually are.

“The government is more concerned with generating a politically useful number than with ensuring that real achievement and future success of students is taking place,” said Horwath.

Report finds many “dropouts” either transfer or suspend their studies

Statistics Canada has released a new study of post-secondary student persistence in the Atlantic provinces. The report was prepared by Ross Finnie and Theresa Qiu who authored a similar national study last year titled The Patterns of Persistence in Post-Secondary Education in Canada.

As with the earlier study, the new report shows that many of the students who leave post-secondary institutions before graduating actually switch to another institution or temporarily suspended their post-secondary education before enrolling again (often referred to as stop-outs). The report demonstrates that community college and university dropout rates tend to be overstated because students who switch institutions or leave briefly and return are often not taken into account.

The study found that the rate of leaving was higher for college students than for university students in Atlantic Canada. Among students aged 17 to 20 when they started university, men were more likely to leave their studies than women – 28% of men left compared to 22% of women. Amongst college students, the rates were almost identical for men and women (33% and 34% respectively).

The study found that 33% of students aged 17 to 20 who enrolled in a university in the fall of 2002 or 2003 had left their studies within two years, however, about 25% of these students switched to another institution. About 25% of the remaining university early leavers subsequently resumed their studies. For college students, the two-year dropout rate was about 35% over the same time period. The number of switchers amongst college students was much lower as compared to university students.

After accounting for switchers and stop-outs, the two-year dropout rate for Atlantic universities fell from 33% to 18% while the rate for colleges dropped from 35% to 29%.

The full report can be downloaded here in .pdf format.