OTTAWA, June 26, 2014 /CNW Telbec/ - Saskatchewan gets a "D" and ranks 21st among the 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.
"As Saskatchewan's economy booms, one of its challenges is to develop the labour force needed to fully capitalize on its resource riches," said Michael Bloom, Vice-President, Industry and Business Strategy. "While current adult skills are weak in Saskatchewan, even more worrisome are the low proportion of students with high-level skills, which signals possible weaknesses in the province's future workforce."
HIGHLIGHTS
- Saskatchewan earns an "A" grade on high school attainment and does well to help immigrant students perform at a level close to Canadian-born students.
- Adult skills in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving are among the lowest of the provinces.
- Saskatchewan has the worst performance on the gender gap indicator—only 60 men to every 100 women have completed post-secondary studies.
Saskatchewan gets poor grades on adult literacy, numeracy and problem-solving tests. Results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test of 15-year-old Saskatchewan student skills show some strengths and struggles. While Saskatchewan earns "B" grades for having a low proportion of students with inadequate math and inadequate science skills, the province also receives two "C" grades (inadequate reading skills and high-level math skills) and two "D" grades (high-level reading skills and high-level science skills).
Saskatchewan gets an "A" for high-school attainment, with 88 per cent of the population in the province aged 25–64 holding at least a high-school diploma. However, the Aboriginal population still lags significantly on high-school attainment.
The other "A" grade for Saskatchewan is on equity in learning outcomes, which means that there is a smaller gap between the scores of Canadian-born students and immigrant students on the PISA math test than in most peer countries. Immigrant students made up 7.5 per cent of the test takers in Saskatchewan.
At the post-secondary level, Saskatchewan earns a "B" grade for the share of the population that has completed college and a "C" for the share of the population with a university degree.
Like most provinces, Saskatchewan gets low grades for the number of PhD students graduating in 2011 ("D-") and the number of math, science, computer science and engineering students graduating in 2011 ("D-"). Saskatchewan receives a "D-" grade on the gender gap indicator—for every 100 women in Saskatchewan who have completed college or university education, only 60 men have done the same.
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.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 221, E-mail: [email protected]
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