The Fraser Institute published the annual rankings of British Columbia elementary schools, the most easily accessible tool for parents to compare the academic performance of the province's schools.
The Report Card on British Columbia's Elementary Schools 2023 ranks 932 public and independent elementary schools based on 8 academic indicators derived from the provincewide Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) results.
"The report card offers parents information they can't easily get anywhere else, about how schools perform over time and how they compare to other schools in B.C.," said Peter Cowley, report co-author and senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
Contrary to common misconceptions, the data suggest every school is capable of improvement regardless of type, location, and student characteristics.
For example, Pacific Heights Elementary in Surrey is one of the province's fastestimproving schools, climbing from a score of 3.9 (out of 10) in 2018 to 6.5 in 2022, the latest year of available comparable data. Pacific Heights achieved these improvements despite 22.4 per cent of students being English Language Learners.
Over the same time period, Decker Lake Elementary in Burns Lake improved from 2.5 to 5 despite 10.7 per cent of the school's students having special needs who require additional support.
"We often hear that schools can't improve student performance because of the communities and students they serve, but the evidence suggests otherwise," Cowley said.
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