The End of Accountability in British Columbia High School Student Performance

The British Columbia government has changed provincewide student testing in high schools so dramatically that it no longer produces quality provincewide student assessment data.
Three significant changes have been introduced that weaken the results and usefulness of high school testing in BC:
- The assessments no longer affect a student’s grade for the related course.
- Students are not required to pass the assessment to graduate.
- The assessments no longer test course-specific knowledge but rather broader concepts and ideas. Because of this, the tests are significantly less consequential for students.
In 2021/22, participation in the Grade 10 numeracy assessment was 22.3 percentage points lower than the 2015/16 Grade 10 Math exam; participation in the 2021/22 Grade 10 literacy assessment was 17.1 percentage points lower than the 2015/16 Grade 10 English exam; and participation in the 2021/22 Grade 12 literacy assessment was 14.2 percentage points lower than the 2015/16 Grade 12 English exam.
While writing these assessments is “mandatory” for graduation, fewer students are writing them, and BC’s graduation rate—96 percent—hasn’t plummeted.
This reduces confidence that the new assessments reliably measure student performance. As a result, the Fraser Institute will not publish its Report Card on BC Secondary Schools, which has been published since 1998, unless the government reinstates quality provincewide high school testing.
Teachers, school administrators, and policymakers have lost quality provincewide data to guide school improvement.
BC parents have lost a valuable tool in understanding how their child and their school are performing.