Fraser Institute School Rankings Explained: How Ontario and BC Report Cards Work

Every January the Fraser Institute publishes report cards for Ontario elementary schools, and it publishes similar tables for Ontario secondary schools and for British Columbia. Newspapers run the headline lists, parents search for their school, and the rating out of 10 becomes shorthand for quality. Here is what the number is actually made of, where it is useful, and where it misleads.

What the Fraser Institute rating measures

The Ontario elementary report card is built almost entirely from EQAO results: the share of students meeting the provincial standard in Grade 3 and Grade 6 reading, writing and mathematics, the gap between boys and girls, and the share of tests below standard. The secondary report card uses the Grade 9 mathematics assessment and the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test. British Columbia's report cards use the Foundation Skills Assessment in Grades 4 and 7, with graduation-year measures for secondary schools.

Each indicator is turned into a score, the scores are combined, and the result is scaled from 0 to 10. A school's rank is simply its position on that scale among all rated schools. The Institute also publishes a five-year trend, which is the most useful part of the table and the least reported.

Why a 10 is not "the best school"

• The same test data drives every score. Two schools with the same EQAO or FSA results will get the same rating no matter how different their classrooms are. The rating adds nothing that is not already in the public results.
• It is not adjusted for who the students are. The Institute publishes a parental-income figure alongside the rating but does not adjust for it. Schools serving advantaged neighbourhoods dominate the top of the table for the same reason they dominate raw test results.
• Small schools jump around. A school with 20 students in Grade 6 can move two or three points on the strength of a handful of children. Read the five-year trend before reacting to one year.
• Many schools are missing. Schools with too few students tested, newly opened schools and schools that did not participate in a cycle have no rating at all. A missing school is not a weak school.
• Private schools are included on the same scale even though their intake is selected by fees and admissions, which makes "beat the public school down the road" comparisons meaningless.

How this site's rankings differ

The Canada Success Index on this site starts from the same official EQAO and FSA data, because they are the only consistent school-level results in both provinces. The difference is in what happens next:

• Every component is a percentile within the school's own type and province, so an elementary school is compared with elementary schools, not with secondary schools.
• Community advantage is a visible component, using the share of students from low-income households and households where no parent holds a degree, drawn from the Ministry's school information finder. You can see at a glance whether a school's results are what you would expect for its intake, or well above it.
• The weights, the percentiles and every underlying number are shown on each profile, so you can disagree with the weighting and still use the data.
• Schools without results are still listed, with their profile and location, rather than disappearing.

How to use both

1. Start with the Ontario rankings or the British Columbia rankings to build a shortlist for your area, and look at the top EQAO elementary schools or FSA schools if raw results are what you care about.
2. Check the Fraser Institute's five-year trend for the shortlist. A steady climb says more than a single high score.
3. Open each school's profile here and compare its results with its community advantage. The schools worth a closer look are the ones achieving more than their intake predicts.
4. Visit. No table measures the things that will matter most on a Tuesday afternoon: the teacher your child gets, the friends they make, and how the school handles the hard weeks.