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Quebecers score high marks on national test
Head of the class in reading, math; Assessment measured academic prowess of 30,000 13-year-old students
BRENDA BRANSWELLThe Gazette
Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Quebec students outshone their peers in a new national assessment of 13-year-olds that put them at the top in reading and mathematics - and second to Alberta in science.

The results come from the first Pan-Canadian Assessment Program, conducted last year by the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada.

More than 30,000 students from 1,500 public and private schools across Canada took part.

The main focus was on reading but the test included science and mathematics. The students' total scores were transformed to a common scale from 0 to 1000, with the Canadian mean score set at 500. In all three subjects, Quebec students' mean scores were significantly higher than those of Canadian students overall.

Quebec has generally ranked well - "on the medal podium" with Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia in national assessments and PISA tests, said council chairperson Kelly Lamrock, New Brunswick's education minister. PISA is the Program for International Student Assessment, sponsored by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

He spoke of the "Quebec advantage" - a political and social culture "that is very favourable to investing aggressively in early childhood education."

"Certainly, we've known for a while that they were ahead of the curve," Lamrock said.

Jean-Pascal Bernier, a spokesperson for Quebec Education Minister Michelle Courchesne, said the results seemed promising but the department would examine them in more depth.

André Caron, head of the Fédération des commissions scolaires du Québec, said the Quebec scores were even more pleasing because "our students are part of the first cohort of the curriculum reform to undergo an assessment of this type." The federation represents 61 French-language school boards in Quebec.

The results were less rosy for Quebec students who took the test in English. Their mean scores in reading and science were significantly lower than those of Canadian students overall who took the test in English.

The council says it's not a new trend and, in most cases, the situation is the same in other provinces where French is the minority language. "In general, linguistic minorities tend to lag behind," Lamrock said.

The test assessed only what was common to curriculums across Canada. Students in all provinces and Yukon took part.

"We're heading more and more into a global economy where we are training kids for jobs that don't exist, using technology that hasn't been invented, to solve problems we haven't conceived of yet," Lamrock said.

"If we're going to do that, (students) had better be able to read, write and do math and science because they're going to have to do a lot of figuring very quickly to solve novel problems."

bbranswell@thegazette.canwest.com

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