York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB) students outscored their provincial peers in all areas of Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) testing, which reveals the pandemic had a more significant impact on math than on literacy achievement among students across Ontario.
“We are very proud of our students and staff for the high level of achievement they consistently demonstrate throughout the school year,” says director of education Domenic Scuglia. “We are pleased that students at York Catholic performed well on the assessments, yet we know that there is more work to be done, especially in mathematics.”
Here are Grade 3 results by subject, followed by board average and then provincial average: reading (82 per cent vs. 73 per cent), writing (78 per cent vs. 65 per cent) and math (68 per cent vs. 59 per cent). Here are Grade 6 results: reading (91 per cent vs. 85 per cent), writing (93 per cent vs. 84 per cent) and math (55 per cent vs. 47 per cent).
The board average in Grade 9 math was 60 per cent, while the provincial average was 52 per cent.
“EQAO scores provide one aspect of the overall assessment of our students that assists us in developing our Board and school improvement plans,” says Elizabeth Crowe, chair of the board of trustees.
The 2021–2022 assessments marked a return to EQAO’s large-scale provincial assessment administration after a pause for the prior two years. The results provide important data on student learning through the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 600,000 students completed EQAO assessments at the elementary and secondary levels in the English- and French-language school systems.
In keeping with government direction, students learning in person and students learning remotely who wrote in person participated in the assessments. In 2022, 97 per cent of YCDSB Grade 3 students and 93 per cent of Grade 6 students participated in the EQAO assessments, while 94 per cent of Grade 9 students completed the math assessment.
Due to several contextual differences, the 2021-2022 EQAO assessments serve as a new baseline for student achievement in the province of Ontario. As a result of those differences, there’s no meaningful comparison of student achievement to previous administrations of the provincial assessments, the YCDSB reports.
YCDSB students also outpaced their provincial peers in the Grade 10 Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT), earning a board average of 87 per cent compared to the provincial average of 82 per cent. Ninety-five per cent of students eligible to take the test for the first time participated. Successful completion of the literacy test is one of 32 requirements students must meet to graduate.
More information about the 2022 EQAO and OSSLT results, including individual school results, are available on the EQAO website at https://www.eqao.com/results/.
