Every three years, the OECD conducts a test of 15-year-old students around the world, seeking to gauge how well countries are teaching math, science and reading.
It’s called the Programme for International Student Assessment – PISA. The last round of tests was in 2018. About 600,000 students in 79 countries participated, and when the results were released in late 2019, Canada was looking pretty good. It ranked 12th in math, eighth in science and sixth in reading. In each case, Canada was solidly ahead of countries such as Britain and the United States, but behind front-runners China and Singapore.
The bad news, however, was Canada’s showing in 2018 was down from 2015, falling two spots in math, one spot in science and three spots in reading. Still good – but slightly less good.
More worrisome is that the declines are a trend. Since the early 2000s, when the tests started, Canada’s scores and rankings have generally slid a little each round. Not by much, but the results are going in the wrong direction.
The decline in the international rankings puts recent headlines from Vancouver in a sharper perspective. In mid-June, news emerged that the Vancouver School Board is phasing out an honours program in its high schools. The decision, according to the VSB, was made to better foster “an inclusive model of education.”
Being cut are honours classes in math and science for Grades 8 and 9 at two of Vancouver’s 18 high schools, the two remaining that offer such classes. These provided an accelerated pace and enriched learning in separate classrooms for stronger students.
Considerable umbrage ensued, from anger that stronger students were being undermined through no fault of their own, to prominent local Vancouverites of Asian heritage who grew up on the lower-income east side of the city and credited access to honours courses for their later success in life.
The decision also seemed to lack logical consistency. Because while honours classes are being pared back, other high-achievement options remain that seem equally exclusive, and in which stronger students can still find themselves in a separate stream.
The VSB is instituting a semester system, so a student going into Grade 8 can take Grade 8 math in the fall and Grade 9 math in the winter, and then take Grade 10 math when they start Grade 9. Further into high school, there is the high-end International Baccalaureate (IB) program for Grades 11 and 12, as well as advanced placement courses.
And there are a dozen-plus “mini-schools,” where one small cohort of students form a school within a school. One mini-school is like the old honours classes, where three grades of work are done in two years. Another mini-school has a digital tech focus.
There are legitimate issues of equity in Canadian public schooling. Ontario, for instance, is ending the outdated practice of “streaming” students in Grade 9 into either an academic or an applied track. Research has shown students from low-income families, with Indigenous backgrounds or with special needs are likelier to be pushed into the applied stream and are almost five times as likely to not earn a diploma than their peers in the academic stream. That’s an unfair and arbitrary sorting.
While equity is a key goal in public education, excellence must also have a central place, as Canada’s falling PISA scores are showing.
High school is where real demarcations in life first occur. As it progresses, some students will pursue some subjects with more academic rigour, others will do so in other courses and some will scrape through.
There is no shortage of specialized programs for advanced students in VSB high schools, so the removal of one of those options, the Grades 8 and 9 honours classes, on equity grounds doesn’t make sense.
More importantly, cutting off opportunities for some students doesn’t mean there is greater equity for the broader group. It would be far better for the VSB to continue with its honours programs, while also ensuring students who have different interests, or who struggle, are given the attention and help suited to their particular needs.
Equity and excellence can co-exist. One does not have to be sacrificed for the other.
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