Judy in Calgary

If it’s valid to extrapolate my Calgary research to the rest of Canada, I don’t think you need Fraser Institute-type information for Nova Scotia.

I have taken the Fraser Institute “School Report Cards” and have examined the rankings of a handful of schools in Calgary. The schools that I’ve chosen to examine have been schools about which I have a good deal of anecdotal information, either because my own children attended them, or friends’ children attend them, or whatever.

I must tell you that I approached the Fraser Institute information with a great deal of scepticism. The idea of ranking schools in the way that the FI does did not sit comfortably with me from a philosophical point of view.

Yet, when I looked at the FI’s numbers, they were surprisingly consistent with my own knowledge of the schools in question.

I then cross referenced those school rankings with what I knew about the neighbourhoods in which the schools were located and the police department’s community crime statistics.

I found a very high level of correlation amongst the FI’s rankings, my anecdotal knowledge of the schools and the neighbourhoods in which those schools were located, and crime statistics. Although I would have expected such a correlation to exist, I was amazed at the extent to which the socio-economic bracket of a given neighbourhood could act as a predictor of the crime level in that neighbourhood and the quality of the schools in that neighbourhood.

Perhaps it is worth emphasizing that this correlation is true only for government-funded schools. It is not true for private schools. For example, there is a private school that is located in a commercial / industrial zone that I would not normally associate with high standards. However, that school ranks highly on the FI scale. I think the reason is obvious. The children who attend that school do not live in that neighbourhood. They come from other areas, and they get to school on buses operated by that school or they are given rides by their parents. It’s also pretty obvious that those children live in enriched environments (lots of international travel, etc.), and the school campus itself also provides an enriched environment, regardless of its surroundings.

Going back to government-funded schools, my personal experience has been that a good, solid, middle-class neighbourhood is the easiest and simplest place in which to live and send one’s children to school. Poor neighbourhoods have problems. Affluent neighbourhoods also have problems, but of a somewhat different kind.

Hope that helps.

destinationnovascotia

Wow! You have really done your homework again havn't you Judy. Thank you for taking the trouble to give such a detailed reply.

I think that my main problem is that in the UK everyone is used to having to much data on which to base their choice of school, I feel really in the dark about school in Canada.

I guess I will just have to go by gut feeling when I visit them. Anyway, thanks again.