Waterloo Region’s Catholic students remain more likely than public board students to meet the provincial standard in reading, writing and math, according to the latest standardized test results.
Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) released board-by-board results of testing from the 2016-17 school year on Wednesday, shedding local light on the previously released provincial numbers.
Across the province, results on the EQAO’s reading, writing and math assessments were relatively unchanged from one year earlier.
Over the past five years, Grade 3 students have shown increases in their reading ability, while fewer Grade 3 and Grade 6 students have met the math standard.
At the Waterloo Region District School Board, Grade 3 students seem to be improving their reading skills, while writing and math abilities are declining.
Grade 6 students are showing long-term improvement in reading and writing skills, with math results are falling. The most recent EQAO numbers have 47 per cent of Grade 6 WRDSB students meeting or exceeding the provincial standard. (By Grade 9, that number increases to 82 per cent.)
Grade 3 students in the Waterloo Catholic District School Board, are increasingly passing the EQAO reading tests, while writing and math scores remain stable.
At the Grade 6 level, scores are increasing in reading and writing while staying level in math.
Both boards issued press releases about their results Wednesday, with the public board saying its scores showed that it was catching up to the provincial average, while the Catholic board highlighted that its students were ahead of the average Ontario math scores across all grade levels.
The EQAO website contains full results for the Waterloo Region District School Board and Waterloo Catholic District School Board.
