Canadian education | high school graduation rate | adult literacy rate

Education and Skills Overview
Details and Analysis
Details and analysis for the Education and Skills category will be available in September 2008.

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. . . Canada’s high-school graduation rate is second only to the U.S., and its college completion is the best among 17 peer countries. Yet the adult literacy skills of four in ten working-age Canadians are inadequate.

On this page

* Putting Canadian Education and Skills in context
* How does Canadian education measure up?
* Has Canada’s performance improved over time?
* What are the strengths and weaknesses of education in Canada?
* What does Canada have to do to improve its grade?

Putting Canadian Education and Skills in context

In Canada, education is seen as the best route to earning a decent living and to enhancing personal growth and happiness. Educated people not only make healthier life choices but also make integral contributions to business innovation, productivity, and national economic performance.

There is a strong and direct relationship between education spending and educational attainment and, in turn, economic growth. A recent multi-country study from the European Commission found that if a country’s national average educational attainment is increased by a single year, aggregate productivity increases by 5 per cent. This would be the equivalent of adding more than $60 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, much evidence suggests that educated people make decisions that lead to healthier and longer lives. Education drives success.
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How does Canadian education measure up?
Canada’s best performance is in the Education and Skills category. Canada earns a “B” grade, and moves ahead of Japan this year to second place, behind Finland.
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Has Canada’s performance improved over time?
Canada’s grade dropped from an “A” in the earliest year for which we have data to a “B” in the most recent year of data. Although Canada’s performance has improved over time, Finland has extended its lead and is the only country to receive an “A” this year. Finland’s outstanding performance sets a new bar for an “A” grade in the Conference Board’s relative ranking system.
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What are the strengths and weaknesses of education in Canada?

Canada’s strength is in a public system that provides many Canadians with a good education and the basic skills they need to enter the workforce and achieve substantial success. The system’s primary focus is on delivering education to young people, aged 5 to 25. Over the past 15 years, raising the high-school graduation rate has become a major educational priority—a response to the growing consensus that high-school graduation is the base-level educational requirement for personal success in the labour market. While Canadians are at school, they become well educated, for the most part, in basic subjects like mathematics, reading, and science. Canada now has one of the highest rates of high-school and college completion in the world.

Paradoxically, Canada’s strength also contributes to one of two areas requiring improvement: The Canadian system is heavily weighted toward school-acquired skills—more so than in European countries. It lacks focus on work-based skills training and lifelong education that can be fostered outside traditional academic institutions. Furthermore, Canadian adults who have not been fortunate enough to acquire basic levels of education in school are at risk of slipping through the cracks.

Canada’s adult literacy rate is worse than it was a decade ago: Seven million working-age Canadian adults—about four in ten—do not have the literacy skills necessary to function in the workplace. Canada’s economic boom in the last 10 years has so far protected many of these people. Conference Board research shows, however, that people with low literacy skills have weaker attachments to the labour market and generally do not do well in economic downturns.
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What does Canada have to do to improve its grade?

To maintain its high ranking and even improve its grade, Canadians need to have access to education and skills outside the traditional school system. Currently, Canadian employers are notoriously low investors in workplace training programs. And of what they do invest, only a very small percentage—less than 2 per cent—goes to basic literacy skills. As a result, the Canadian training system does not compensate for people who, for various reasons, may not have acquired skills at school. Demographic change in Canada offers an opportunity to shift resources to a system that would enhance workplace training and focus on the acquisition of skills outside the traditional education system.

Canada also underperforms at the highest levels of skills attainment. Canada produces relatively few “high-end” graduates with Ph.D.s, especially those in challenging technical fields such as math, science, computer science, and engineering. The scientists and Ph.D.s that Canada does produce tend to congregate in research positions that may not be well connected to commercialization activities. Increasing the number of graduates with advanced qualifications in these fields is necessary for enhancing innovation and productivity growth—and ultimately for the future quality of life of Canadians.