The Fraser Institute have published their yearly ranking of Ontario elementary schools, drawing conclusions from Grade 3 and Grade 6 EQAO results that place two Kingston schools among the bottom ranked in the province.
Rideau Heights – with a score of 0 – and John Grave Simcoe -scoring just 0.3- were listed in the bottom 15 ranked schools in the province.
The Fraser Institute Report Card ranks 3052 elementary schools across the province, and the organization says the report card collects a variety of “relevant, objective indicators of school performance” and compiles it into one easy to access document in order to offer parents information about the performance of their child’s school relative to the rest of the province.
“Our Report Cards offer parents information they can’t easily get anywhere else, about how their child’s school performs and how it compares to other schools in Ontario,” said Paige MacPherson, a Fraser Institute senior fellow said in a news release.
“It doesn’t matter where a school is ranked, or what challenges its students may face. The evidence is clear—all types of schools, located all over the province with different types of students, are all capable of improvement,
Limestone District School Board Director of Education Krishna Burra, however says EQAO data is no secret and is made public on a yearly basis.
Burra says the data which the report is based on is now over a year old, with parents receiving more recent results within the last month, and without context – the data paints an incomplete picture.
Ultimately, there is not much weight given to the rankings, good or bad.
“The Limestone District School Board remains focused on the provincial Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) assessment data and other data in the Provincial Student Achievement Plan. EQAO results are publicly available each year, shared annually with Limestone families, and 2024-2025 results were shared just last month,” Burra said in a statement.
“Limestone continues to use EQAO data and other Provincial Student Achievement Plan data, along with a wide range of additional data based on the student census, school climate surveys, and day-to-day, week-to-week assessment, to guide learning, support students, and strengthen outcomes across all schools in the district. The most recent EQAO data show continuing progress for Limestone students based on most of the results being at, or above, the provincial average. Â
It is important to note that the Fraser Institute rankings reflect only a portion of EQAO data and are based on 2023-2024 results. The board does not view the Fraser Institute’s school rankings as useful or conducive to improving student learning and achievement, as they rely on very narrow data without any context.”
In that data made available publicly, the performance of schools ranked among the lowest are seen to have a modest in improvement in almost all measured categories since the 2023/24 data used for the Fraser Institute Report Cards.
