Study
| EST. READ TIME 2 MIN.Report Card on Aboriginal Education in British Columbia 2011
This edition of the Report Card on Aboriginal Education in British Columbia 2011 includes academic data from both public and independent schools.
Who are British Columbia's Aboriginal children?
British Columbia's Ministry of Education requires that schools ask students to decide whether to identify themselves as students of Aboriginal origin when the annual Student Data Collection form is completed. On the basis of this volunteered information, the ministry counted 68,176 Aboriginal students among a total of 648,624 students registered at British Columbia?s public and private schools at the beginning of the 2008/2009 school year. The Aboriginal total may include (i) Status First Nations students living on-reserve, (ii) Status or non-Status First Nations students living off-reserve, (iii) Métis, and (iv) Inuit. This study is concerned with these four self-identified groups of students. British Columbia is, at present, one of only three provinces and territories in Canada that identify Aboriginal students in a way that allows their academic results to be segregated for analysis. This edition of the Report Card on Aboriginal Education in British Columbia 2011 includes academic data from both public and independent schools.
In general, how are British Columbia's Aboriginal children doing in school?
Data available from the provincial ministry of education provide measures on at least two dimensions of academic performance that can be used to evaluate the success of students and schools: the likelihood that students will annually progress from grade-to-grade until they receive their secondary school diploma, and the level of achievement on uniform province-wide examinations at several grade levels. The delayed advancement rate measures the likelihood that students will make education a priority and complete their secondary program in a timely manner. Examination results are a measure of the extent to which students have acquired the skills and knowledge embodied in the curriculum.
On both measures, the province's Aboriginal students continue to lag behind their non-Aboriginal classmates and there is little apparent improvement since 2005.
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Peter Cowley
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
Peter Cowley is a Senior Fellow and former Director of School Performance Studies at the Fraser Institute. He has aB.Comm. from the University of British Columbia (1974). In 1994, Mr Cowley independently wrote and published The Parent's Guide, a popular handbook for parents of British Columbia's secondary-school students. The Parent's Guide web site replaced the handbook in 1995. In 1998, Mr Cowley was co-author of the Fraser Institute's A Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia, the first of the Institute's continuing series of annual reports on school performance. This was followed in by The 1999 Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools, Boys, Girls, and Grades: Academic Gender Balance in British Columbia's Secondary Schools, and The 1999 Report Card on Alberta's High Schools. Since then, Mr Cowley has co-authored all of the Institute's annual Report Cards. Annual editions now include Report Cards on elementary and secondary schools in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario and on secondary schools in Quebec.… Read more -
Stephen T. Easton
Stephen T. Easton was a professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University. He received his A.B. from Oberlin College in1970 and an A.M. in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Chicago. He published extensively; his publications included Rating Global Economic Freedom (with M.A. Walker, Fraser Institute 1992); Education in Canada: An Analysis of Elementary, Secondary and Vocational Schooling (Fraser Institute 1988); Legal Aid Efficiency: Cost and Competitiveness (with P.J. Brantingham and P.L. Brantingham, Queen's University 1994). He was also co-author of the School Report Card Series.Professor Easton was an associate editor for Economic Inquiry from 1980 to 1984, on the board of editors for the Canadian Journal of Economics from 1984 to 1987, organizer for the Canadian Economics Association's Canada-France Roundtable in 1988 and representative for the Canadian Economics Association to the Social Science Federation of Canada Aid to Scholarly Publications from 1991 to 1994. He was a senior research fellow of The Fraser Institute.… Read more -
Michael Thomas
Michael Thomas is the former Program Director, Children First: School Choice Trust and former Associate Director, School Performance Studies. Beforejoining the Fraser Institute, Michael Thomas served as a policy advisor in the Ontario Ministry of Education, where his files included adult education, students at risk of not meeting their graduation requirements, the new curriculum, student health initiatives, and the community use of schools. Michael is a former public school trustee, who served on the Toronto District School Board from 1997 to 2000. Michael has also held positions within the City of Toronto, and the Ontario Ministries of Tourism and Recreation, and Citizenship. He attended Centennial College and York University, graduating with a BA in Political Science.… Read more