OTTAWA, June 26, 2014 /CNW/ - New Brunswick earns a "D" and ranks 22nd among 26 jurisdictions on the Education and Skills report card. This is the first "How Canada Performs: Education and Skills" report card to look at provincial performance in an international context.
"New Brunswick's strengths are in high school and college attainment," said Michael Bloom, Vice-President, Industry and Business Strategy. "However, New Brunswick performs poorly on student skills in reading, math and science; and adult skills in numeracy, literacy and problem solving in technology-rich environments."
New Brunswick gets an "A+" on the share of its population aged 25 to 64 that has completed college. In fact, among the 26 comparator jurisdictions, New Brunswick ranks second only to Prince Edward Island on college attainment. Like most of the provinces, New Brunswick also does well on the share of the population aged 25-64 that has completed high school and scores an "A" grade.
New Brunswick doesn't fare quite as well on university attainment, ranking 22nd and earning a "C" grade for the share of the population aged 25-64 with a university degree.
HIGHLIGHTS
- New Brunswick performs poorly on student skills in reading, math and science, and on adult skills in numeracy, literacy and problem-solving in technology rich environments.
- The province ranks second on the proportion of its population that have attained a college diploma.
- New Brunswick has a small gap between the math scores of Canadian-born and immigrant students.
New Brunswick gets an "A" grade on the equity in learning outcomes indicator, which measures the gap in performance between native-born and immigrant students on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) math test.
Overall, however, New Brunswick students did not perform well on the 2012 PISA skills tests of 15-year-old students, and earns four "D" grades and two "C" grades on high-level and inadequate skills in reading, math and science.
Furthermore, the province scores poorly on adult skills, earning mostly "D" grades on literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills in technology-rich environments.
Like most of the provinces, New Brunswick gets low grades on the number of PhD students graduating in 2011 ("D-") and the number of math, science, computer science and engineering graduates in 2011 ("D-").
How Canada Performs is an ongoing research program at The Conference Board of Canada to help leaders identify relative strengths and weaknesses in Canada's socio-economic performance. The How Canada Performs website presents data and analysis on Canada's performance compared to peer countries in six performance categories: Economy, Innovation, Environment, Education and Skills, Health, and Society.
Released today, and building on previous "How Canada Performs" analyses, the Education and Skills report card is the second of six to be produced over the next year on Canadian and provincial socio-economic performance. The Economy report card was published in May 2014. The remaining report cards will follow over the next year.
This is the first year that provincial rankings are included in the report cards. Data sources and report card methodology can be found on the How Canada Performs website.
SOURCE: Conference Board of Canada
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Yvonne Squires, Media Relations, Tel.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 221, E-mail: [email protected]
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