How is education performance measured?

This report card benchmarks the provinces and Canada against 15 international peer countries. Version française.
The peer countries are chosen based on three criteria: standard of living, population size, and geographic size (to exclude city-states). They are the most advanced and wealthiest countries in the world. (For more information on how the peer countries were selected, see the methodology section.) This may mean, however, a country that is a leader in one of the performance areas or on select indicators may not be included in the peer group because it did not meet the selection criteria. Singapore and South Korea, for example, were among the top performers on the 2012 student skills test indicators, but are not included in the report card because they do not meet the criteria for inclusion.
A total of 23 indicators are used to assess provincial performance in the Education and Skills category. Comparable international data are available for 21 of these indicators. Like all How Canada Performs report cards, the Education and Skills report card focuses on outcomes. It tells us what countries and provinces are achieving, not what their efforts are. Consequently, education inputs—the human, financial, and material resources channelled into the education system—are not graded. More...