How Does Your Ontario Elementary School Perform? We Have the Results

August 28, 2025 – Ontario parents now have a clearer way to see how their child's school stacks up. The Signposts of Success report highlights which schools and boards exceed expectations – and what that reveals about student achievement, according to a new report by the C.D. Howe Institute.

In “Signposts of Success: Evaluating Ontario’s Elementary Schools,” author David R. Johnson accounts for socioeconomic factors such as parents’ education levels, lone-parent families, and recent immigration when assessing EQAO performance results. This evidence-based approach reveals which schools are truly excelling, which are underperforming despite advantages, and why transitions to middle school may be setting students back.

“This paper is really about understanding how individual Ontario schools and boards are performing,” said Johnson. “It’s not a simplified ranking; it accounts for a wide range of factors. The goal is to provide information that educators, parents, and policymakers can use meaningfully to support student success, given the context of each school.”

The study highlights five key findings. First, school staff performance play an important role in testing outcomes, as shown by schools serving disadvantaged students that nonetheless achieve high results. Second, details of adjustments for socio-economic status indicators are important, especially when considering how predictors of EQAO outcomes differ between literacy and math, and between Grade 3 and Grade 6. Third, students moving to middle school in Grade 6 perform worse than their peers who remain in the same school.

“There is no compelling academic or social reasoning behind middle schools,” Johnson notes. “Speaking as someone who attended a middle school myself, the evidence in this report underscores just how unhelpful that transition can be.”

Fourth, students in Ontario’s separate (Catholic) and French-language school systems systematically score higher than those in public schools. Lastly, some school boards – particularly three large French-language boards, two of which are Catholic – show stronger EQAO results than others.

The report also points to solutions for improving Ontario’s education system. Findings reveal the consistent high performance of Ontario’s Catholic and French-language boards, suggesting policymakers explore what these boards are doing to pass on the valuable lessons for system-wide improved performance. Finally, with several large boards under provincial supervision for both financial and performance concerns, the report highlights a possible connection between resource management and student performance.

“By taking socioeconomic context into account, Signposts of Success helps policymakers see which schools are facing challenges because of external circumstances and which are underperforming despite having advantages. That way, interventions can be more targeted and fair,” concluded Johnson.

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For more information, contact: David R. Johnson, Professor of Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University; Raquel Schneider, Communications Officer, C.D. Howe Institute, 647-805-3918, rschneider@cdhowe.org.

The C.D. Howe Institute is an independent not-for-profit research institute whose mission is to raise living standards by fostering economically sound public policies. Widely considered to be Canada’s most influential think tank, the Institute is a trusted source of essential policy intelligence, distinguished by research that is nonpartisan, evidence-based and subject to definitive expert review.

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