All Posts Tagged With: "PISA"
Why Alberta’s education system is better
The reasons may surprise you
Snowy Edmonton, Alta. by Stella Blu on Flickr
Alberta is as a maverick when it comes to higher education. The province prepares students for post-secondary better than its neighbors, has some of the country’s most satisfied students and punches above its weight in research.
Now there’s even more evidence that the rest of Canada should pay attention to how Wild Rose Country approaches higher education.
New University of Saskatchewan research, which included 12,000 first-year students, found that grades for Albertans tended to drop just 6.4 points from Grade 12, but fell as much as 19.6 points on average for students from another province. In other words, a student from Alberta who graduates with an 86 average is likely to end first-year as an 80 student, while students from that other unnamed province would average 66.
One reason Alberta’s students are much better prepared is that they study long and hard to pass provincial standardized exams, which account for 50 per cent of their Grade 12 marks. Students in other provinces are graded more subjectively, making it easier for teachers to give high marks.
The higher standards are well-known. In recognition of the high standards, the University of British Columbia automatically raises Albertan students’ grades two per cent when they apply.
But it’s a lot more than standardized tests that make Alberta’s schools succed. Here are six more reasons the rest of Canada ought to pay closer attention to Alberta’s higher education system.
1. Public funding of universities is highest in Alberta.
Statistics Canada says that 72 per cent of funding for Alberta universities came from public sources in 2009. The next highest was Newfoundland at 69 per cent. It was only 49 per cent in Nova Scotia.
2. Albertans outperform their peers well before university.
Alberta’s 15-year-olds came second in the world in reading and fourth in the world in science in the 2009 PISA study, the gold-standard international test. Those were the top scores in Canada.
3. Alberta has two teaching-focused universities that work.
Grant MacEwan and Mount Royal Univeristy have faculty who spend most of their days teaching, rather than conducting research—unlike nearly every university east of Edmonton. And both institutions score exceptionally well on the National Survey of Student Engagement. When asked “if you could start over, would go to the institution you are now attending?,” 50 per cent of Mount Royal seniors and 60 per cent of Grant MacEwan seniors said yes. The average is just 45 per cent.
5. Alberta’s transfer system works.
In Sept. 2009, nearly 12,000 post-secondary students transferred between schools in the province. Many of the transfers are from the provinces’ teaching-focused institutions and community colleges into big research institutions. Harvey Weingarten, then-president of the University of Calgary, told the authors of Academic Reform that transfer students are “academically indistinguishable.”
6. Even with teaching-focused universities, Alberta remains a research leader.
Despite having more students in teaching-only institutions and only 11 per cent of Canada’s population, Alberta holds 17 per cent of the Canada Excellence Research Chairs, which come with up to $10-million apiece. Alberta also has 12 per cent of the prestigious Vanier Scholarships. The University of Alberta has the second highest per-faculty research funding in Canada at $309,332.
Good news about Canada’s education system
Canadian students have come a long way
The end of the year is a hopeful and generous time for Canadians, a time when we indulge our better instincts and tend to look on the bright side of things. How strange then, that recent good news about Canada’s education system has prompted a sudden bout of pessimism.
Last week saw the release of a massive comparison of school systems around the world. The Programme for International School Assessment (PISA) is run every three years by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and tests 470,000 15-year-old students across 65 countries and regions in reading, math and science. Canada, once again, found itself among the world’s leaders in educational performance.
Despite top 10 results in all categories, however, some commentators felt the need to lament the fact we were beaten by Shanghai, which made its first appearance in the PISA tests and stole the show with some very impressive scores. The Globe and Mail claimed the results showed other countries were “leaving us in the chalk dust.” A below-average performance by Prince Edward Island’s students was presented as something of a national disaster. It seems a rather Grinchy way of looking at things, particularly when Canada is doing so well in so many aspects of education.
Beyond our sixth-place finish in reading, seventh in math and eighth in science, the PISA results show that socio-economic status is much less a factor in Canadian test scores than most other countries, suggesting a strong commitment to equality of outcomes. Along with Korea and Finland, Canada was also praised for a low percentage of students failing the tests.
And in a special chapter within one volume, the OECD specifically recognizes Canada’s outstanding performance in the face of the challenges faced by our school system. While Canada’s large immigrant population is a significant strength for our economy and society, issues of language, culture and integration can make success more difficult for new Canadians. Less than one per cent of Shanghai’s student population comes from an immigrant background; for Canada, the figure is 24 per cent. Among countries that receive substantial levels of immigration, such as Australia, the United States, Germany or Switzerland, our test scores are at the top of the heap. And we are the only major country to show no significant difference in performance between immigrant and native-born students. “Canada could provide a model of how to achieve educational success in a large, geographically dispersed, and culturally heterogeneous country,” the report notes admiringly.
Diversity in governance is another area of strength for Canada. While conventional wisdom suggests strict centralization is the key to educational prowess, the OECD observes that “Canada has achieved success within a highly federated system.” We are in fact the only developed country without a national department of education. But this is not an obstacle, as our performance proves. Provincial control of education encourages experimentation and variety. If one province falls below the line, competitive national pressures inevitably motivate it to copy the best practices of other provinces, as is currently the case with P.E.I.
It’s also worth noting that Canada is a relative newcomer to such high expectations. Prior to 2000 we rarely appeared in the top 10 of any PISA category. Now it’s become something of a national obligation. This is certainly a good thing, but at the same time we should recognize how far we’ve come. In a few decades, Canada has built a unique education system recognized as one of the best and most equitable in the world. And that’s something to celebrate any time of year.
From the editors
Ready or not?
International studies say Canada’s high-school students are tops—so why do so many struggle in university?
Are you smarter than a 10th grader? Try this math problem: Nick wants to pave the rectangular patio of his new house. The patio is 5.25 metres long and three metres wide. He needs 81 bricks per square metre. How many bricks does Nick need for the whole patio?
The preceding is a sample question from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, a two-hour test that measured the math, science and literacy levels of 15-year-olds. More than 400,000 students from 57 countries took part, and Canadian kids were once again among the best in the world, finishing third in science (behind Finland and Hong Kong), fourth in reading (behind Korea, Finland and Hong Kong), and seventh in mathematics.
Want to know how Canadian students measure up? Check out the charts in our 18th Annual Rankings issue, on newsstands now!
Canada’s impressive PISA results are not an aberration: when international studies of teenage and elementary student achievement are conducted, Canadian students and the Canadian education system shine. Over the past decade, Canadian elementary- and secondary-school students have repeatedly ranked among the world’s best in mathematics, science, reading and writing.
But while international tests say that our kids and our high schools are tops, there’s compelling evidence from universities and colleges that paints a very different picture. “[High-school] students have done math programs that are supposed to have prepared them for post-secondary,” says Memorial University mathematics and statistics professor Sherry Mantyka, “and they’re desperately not prepared.” Before students at Memorial can take a math credit course, they must take a math placement test; each year, 25 per cent to 50 per cent score at a Grade 6 level or lower. A study of more than 10,000 students who entered college in 2006 in the Toronto area showed that 35 per cent earned a D or an F in first-term college math.
And it’s not just math: at the University of Ottawa, to catch the large number of students falling behind and falling through the cracks, the administration in the last few years has felt it necessary to expand its student help centres and hire hundreds of student tutors. The University of Waterloo has first-year students write a five-paragraph essay, which is graded on grammar, punctuation and structure. Each year, roughly one-quarter fail. Waterloo is a university where admission is highly competitive, and generally awarded to only well-above-average high-school grads.
What’s going on? Are Canadian high-school students among the best prepared on earth—or are many shockingly unprepared for higher education? The answer is yes. And yes.
