EQAO Results Explained: Grade 3, Grade 6, Grade 9 Math and the OSSLT

Ontario's Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) runs province-wide assessments that are published for every publicly funded school. They are the only consistent, school-level results in the province, and this site's Ontario rankings are built on them.

The assessments

• Grade 3 and Grade 6: reading, writing and mathematics, assessed at the end of the primary and junior divisions.
• Grade 9: mathematics, now a single de-streamed course assessment.
• Grade 10: the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT), which students must pass (or complete an equivalent course) to graduate.

Results are reported as the percentage of students at or above the provincial standard (Level 3 of 4, roughly a B grade). The OSSLT is reported as the percentage of first-time eligible students who passed.

Reading a school's numbers

Provincial averages in recent years sit around 60 to 75% for reading and writing and lower for mathematics, with Grade 6 math often the weakest. A school 15 points above the provincial figure in every subject is performing strongly; one that is 15 points below deserves questions.

The Ministry's School Information Finder data, which this site also shows, gives each school's share of students from low-income households, whose parents have no post-secondary credential, who are new to Canada or whose first language is not English. These shape results heavily. Our index includes low income and parental education as context, and the comparison tool lets you put a school next to others with a similar profile.

Limits

EQAO is a snapshot, not a measure of growth. Participation varies, results for small schools swing from year to year, and the assessments say nothing about French immersion quality, the arts, special education or school culture. Private schools do not sit EQAO, so they appear on this site without results.