Six Toronto schools among the best in province: Fraser Institute

Students are shown in a classroom in this September 2012 file photo. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Six elementary schools in Toronto have achieved perfect scores in an annual report card put out by a well-known Canadian think-tank.

The Fraser Institute’s Report Card on Ontario Elementary Schools ranked 3,030 schools across the province -- both public and private -- based on nine academic indicators from the results of province-wide reading, writing and math tests administered by the province’s Education Quality and Accountability Office.

Toronto’s Hillmount, Arbor Glen, Seneca Hill, St. Michael’s Choir, Cottingham and Sathya Sai all achieved perfect scores of 10. An additional 10 schools across the province also achieved perfect scores.

Peter Cowley, the Fraser Institute’s director of school performance studies, said the rankings are important in helping schools raise their academic standards.

“By pinpointing the subject areas where individual schools improve or decline, and by demonstrating how a school’s academic performance compares to other Ontario schools, our report helps educators help kids be more successful in the classroom,” he said in a statement on the organization’s website.

The organization says the report also shows that students who face both personal and economic challenges can still thrive. For example, while 51.7 per cent of the Grade 6 students at Laggan Public School in rural eastern Ontario are special needs, the organization said, the school posted an overall rating of 8.2 out of ten.

The average score for all Ontario schools was 6.0, with the average percentage of special needs students at the schools being 22.4 per cent.

The organization also highlighted Langton Public School in Fenelon Falls, Ont., where the average parental income is just $19,800 -- far below the provincial average of $73,000. Yet Langton still posted a 6.6 out of 10.

The lowest ranked schools in Toronto were Ogden, Highland Heights, Carleton Village and Eastview.