I have good news and bad news about school dropouts in Quebec.

Do you remember the big debate sparked by the Institut du Québec (IdQ) study in the spring of 2018? But yes, the study that said that Quebec had been stagnating for ten years, that it had a big gap with Ontario and that it had dramatic differences between boys and girls?

Well, since that debate, Statistics Canada has extensively revised its high school graduation data, using what it now calls “the true cohort method.” (1) The new results, released on December 10, are quite different.

Recall that the IdQ study found that Quebec had a stagnant graduation rate of 64% for several years, 20 points lower than Ontario. This graduation rate – in some ways the opposite of the dropout rate – affected students in the public sector who were successful in normal times (five years).

Then the IdQ reported the catastrophic gap between the graduation rate of boys and girls (14 points), a unique phenomenon in Canada (in Ontario, the study found a gap of 5 points).

First good news with the revised figures from Statistics Canada: the graduation rate in Quebec in normal times according to the “real cohort” method is closer to 75% in 2017 (most recent figures available). This rate, which includes the private sector, is thus 11 points higher than the rate published by the IdQ (whose data also come from Statistics Canada).

If you include students who take up to two more years to complete high school, the rate rises to 83%. In summary, the dropout rate among young people is about 17%.

> Consult the main table of the study

> Consult the explanations underlying the study

This rate of 83% after seven years of secondary school will not stagnate for this cohort of students. The graduation rate will continue to rise over time, reflecting the longer progress of some students. For example, Statistics Canada estimates that the proportion of those who attended high school in the 2000s is 91% today (2).

> View completion rate statistics

Another piece of good news about the revised figures is that the above-mentioned rate of 75% in 2017 after five years has not stagnated in recent years. This rate was 71% in 2014, 72% in 2015 and 74% in 2016. In short, there is constant evolution.

Gap between boys and girls

Now the pot. The new figures confirm one of the IdQ’s main bad news, namely the very large gap between graduation rates for boys and girls. In 2017, 80% of girls graduated in five years, compared to just 69% of boys, a difference of 11 points.

In Ontario, the gap between boys and girls is 7 points, in New Brunswick 5 points and in British Columbia 4 points. Quebec’s gap with the other provinces is no longer catastrophic, but it is still very large, far too large.

More bad news: Quebec continues to lag behind other provinces. After seven years, Quebec’s graduation rate is 83%, the lowest rate in Canada. That’s 10 points lower than Ontario (93%) and 4 points lower than New Brunswick (87%).

On this subject, it must be said that the Statistics Canada study now takes the trouble to include a note in its study to call for caution when making comparisons. This assessment is directly linked to the 2018 debate, which shows that our debates are not useless.

“Academic pathways, passing grades and subject requirements, as well as the student populations studied, may vary from province to province,” writes Statistics Canada.

For example, in Quebec the pass mark for courses is 60%, while elsewhere in Canada it is 50%.

Another example: When given the same reading, science or math exam, 15-year-old students from Quebec perform significantly better than residents of New Brunswick or Manitobans, who nevertheless score higher.

More specifically, 67% of Quebec students score at Level 3 or higher in reading, significantly more than students in New Brunswick (54%), Manitoba (56%) or Saskatchewan (58%). In mathematics, the gap is even wider in Quebec’s favour. Clearly, the barrier to obtaining your diploma is higher in Quebec.

However, students from Ontario and Alberta also stand out in the PISA tests and their graduation rates are much higher than in Quebec, especially among boys. In addition, their diplomas require six years of study in normal times, compared to five in Quebec.

In short, graduation in Quebec does not resemble the disaster that was the IdQ in 2018 when you include the private sector, which has absorbed a large proportion of students in recent years (3). And it is not easy to compare graduation rates from one province to another.

However, the IdQ was right about the very large gap between boys and girls in Quebec. The weakness of boys must be THE priority of the Ministry of Education in this regard.

1. Statistics Canada now calculates rates by tracking cohorts of students over time (longitudinal data), which are the actual graduation of groups of students monitored five to seven years after they entered secondary school. Previously, the organization had to create a synthetic cohort by dividing the number of graduates aged 16 to 19 in a given year group by the number of enrollments a few years earlier, with an adjustment to account for intervening deaths and migration flows.

2. Proportion of secondary school graduates among 25- to 34-year-olds in 2018.

3. The proportion of private pupils has stabilised for three years at the beginning of secondary school.