Five of the West Island’s 13 high schools are listed in the Top 100 of the Fraser Institute’s annual ranking of Quebec secondary schools, with Collège de l’Ouest de l’Île, the French wing of the private school in Dollard des Ormeaux, listed as the best performing in the region.

Another five are listed in the top half of the think-tank’s list that looks at all of the 468 high schools in the province.

The private schools in the area scored the highest on the ranking that was released Nov. 18, with Kuper Academy in Kirkland ranked in 37^th place, while the English wing of West Island College was in 61st place.

John Rennie High School in Pointe Claire, which is administered by the Lester B. Pearson School Board, was the top ranked public secondary school in the region, registered in 67th place on the listing.

Appearing on the bottom half of the annual ranking report are École Secondaire des Sources in Dollard at 246^th position, Beaconsfield High School in Beaconsfield, which was pegged in 255^th position; and MacDonald High School in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, which was 307^th on the list.

Joanne Malowany, the assistant director of communications with the Lester B. Pearson School Board, declined to comment on the report, explaining the board does not remark on external rankings.

The Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools 2023, evaluated all 468 public and private high schools that provide instruction in both French and English in the province. The schools were ranked based the results of provincewide tests in four key subjects – the language of instruction, second language, science and math – during the 2021-22 academic year.

Taking the grades data, the Fraser Institute calculates a rating for each school based on five indicators: average uniform examination marks in each of the four subject areas; the percentage of uniform examinations failed; school-level grade inflation, which measures how a given school’s average marks compares with the overall average mark for required courses; the difference between the examination results of male and female students; and a measure of the likelihood that students enrolled at the school will not complete their program of studies in a timely manner. This computation results in a grade for each school on a scale of 1 to 10.

“Our report card offers parents information they can’t easily get anywhere else about their child’s school and how it compares to other schools across Quebec,” Yanick Labrie, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, said in a statement. The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.