Four of the six high schools in the Vaureuil-Soulanges area are listed in the top half of the Fraser Institute’s annual ranking of Quebec secondary schools, with Collège Bourget in Rigaud listed as the best performing in the region and the only local school in the Top 100.
The French-language École du Chêne Bleu in Pincourt is ranked in 107th place, while Cité des Jeunes high school in Vaudreuil-Dorion was in 179th place among the 468 schools in the province. The combined campuses of the English-language Westwood High School, located in St. Lazare and Hudson, registered in 203rd place on the listing.
Appearing on the bottom half of the annual ranking report are Soulanges High School in St. Polycarpe, which is administered by the Lester B. Pearson School Board, which was pegged in 246th position and the English-language sector of Bourget, which was 417th 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.
See SCHOOLS, Page 2.
SCHOOLS: Rankings based on test results in core subjects
From Page 1
The Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools 2023, released Nov. 18, evaluated all 468 public and private high schools that provide instruction in both French and English in the province. The schools were ranked based on 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.
All schools in the region except one saw their rankings on the Fraser Institute’s list this year exceed their five-year average score the think tank has produced in the last five years. Soulanges High School was the only one that saw their current score drop below its five-year average.
The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.