University of Regina education professor Marc Spooner takes a closer look at student scores in Saskatchewan in math, reading and science.
The Saskatchewan government has taken an antagonistic stance towards public education, and in particular teachers, by steadfastly refusing to discuss class size and complexity at the bargaining table, while at the very same time investing in costly public billboards in an attempt to negatively sway opinion against our provincial educators.
Furthering these tensions, the government invoked the notwithstanding clause with Bill 137
to, as noted by Justice Megaw, avoid consultation with teachers, parents, students and other stakeholders.
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These obstinate decisions seem strikingly counterproductive to any healthy relationship with the education sector and make it difficult not to agree with columnist Phil Tank’s conclusion that “spending that fails to keep up with the growth of students and overcrowded classrooms is taking a toll on education in Saskatchewan.”
But what is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) really telling us? There are several takeaways to be gleaned from our participation in PISA.
First, there’s no denying the importance of math, reading and science, and there’s no dismissing the fact that our provincial scores have gone down when compared to the last PISA cycle; a rather different outcome to the previous PISA round when Saskatchewan was the only Canadian province whose scores improved on all three measures between PISA 2015 and PISA 2018.
With PISA 2022, it should be noted that all Canadian provinces saw a dip in performance, as did almost every country around the world, which is perhaps not surprising given we’ve just been through a global pandemic.
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However, I do not want to gloss over the fact that Saskatchewan does underperform on PISA when compared to Canada’s top scoring provinces and it has been this way for decades.
Is that, in itself, cause for alarm?
Within Canada, our four top performing provinces are Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Québec. These four provinces also happen to be our most populous by quite a large margin of at least three million or more inhabitants. Here’s where the results can be misleading.
A property of PISA testing that doesn’t get reported on nearly enough is that PISA’s own research has found that across participating OECD countries, students who attend schools in cities, on average, perform better than those in rural areas and towns at a non-negligible “… difference in performance [that] translates to about 20 PISA score points — the equivalent of half a year of schooling.”
Drilling further into the PISA 2022 data reveals that, in math, Saskatchewan (468), Manitoba (470), New Brunswick (468), and Nova Scotia (470) all scored similarly; in reading, Saskatchewan (484), Manitoba (486) and Nova Scotia (489) scored similarly; and in science Saskatchewan (494), Manitoba (492), Nova Scotia (492) and Prince Edward Island (496) had comparable scores.
Each of these provinces has fewer than 1.5 million inhabitants. In terms of the urban-rural split, Statistics Canada finds “the Atlantic provinces have the highest share of people living in rural areas followed by Manitoba and Saskatchewan, while Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia have much lower shares of residents living in a rural area.”
It is not difficult to imagine how economies of scale, specialized programs, access to technological infrastructure and the synergies of large cities (think museums, science centres, professional services, and diverse role-models) all contribute to an advantageous learning environment.
In fact, out-of-school factors play a significant role in student learning as well as success on the tests; for example, PISA notes, “Socio-economically disadvantaged students in OECD countries are seven times more likely on average than advantaged students not to achieve basic mathematics proficiency.”
If the Saskatchewan government is serious about not failing our kids, it could start by: 1) ensuring no one in our province lives in poverty, 2) bargaining in good faith with our teachers, and 3) properly negotiating and addressing class size and complexity concerns with the infrastructure and supports needed to do so.
Marc Spooner is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina.
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