Nova Scotia Gets "C" Grade on "How Canada Performs" Report Card

OTTAWA, June 26, 2014 /CNW Telbec/ - Nova Scotia gets a "C" and ranks 12th out of 26 jurisdictions on its Education and Skills report card, according to The Conference Board of Canada's first "How Canada Performs: Education and Skills" report card to compare the 10 provinces and 16 advanced countries.

"Nova Scotia has a number of strengths in its education and skills performance. In particular, a high percentage of the working-age population has completed high school and a large share has a college diploma," said Michael Bloom, Vice-President, Industry and Business Strategy.

Nova Scotia gets "A" grades for the share of the population aged 25 to 64 that has completed high school and the share of the population aged 25 to 64 that has a college diploma.

Nova Scotia's grades on university-related indicators are superior to those of many provinces. It earns a "B" grade for the percentage of the population aged 25 to 64 with a university degree. While Nova Scotia gets a "C" on the number of science, math, computer science and engineering graduates in 2011, it ranks ahead of all other provinces and behind only Finland, the United Kingdom and Australia among the 16 international countries (including Canada).

The test results on student skills from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are mixed. Nova Scotia gets "B" grades for the percentage of students with inadequate reading and science skills, and a "C" for students with inadequate math skills. However, the province gets "D" grades on all three high-level skills indicators: reading, math and science.

Results on adult skills are also varied. Nova Scotia gets an "A" for having a large proportion of adults with high-level problem-solving skills. But it also earns two "D" grades for having a high percentage of adults with inadequate numeracy and inadequate literacy skills (in both instances, more than half the working age population have inadequate skills).

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

Yvonne Squires, Media Relations, Tel.: [phone] ext. 221, E-mail: [email protected]