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Students in urban schools fared significantly better in a recent study of reading literacy published by Statistics Canada than their rural counterparts. The data from this study was taken from the 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) an international effort between member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

15 year-old students were asked questions of varying difficulty based on different texts such as short stories, a letter on the internet and diagrams. They were assessed on their capacity to retrieve specified information, to interpret, reflect on and evaluate, drawing on their own existing knowledge. Canadian students averaged a score of 534, with an international average of 500. Other OECD countries ranged from a high of 546 in Finland to a low of 422 in Mexico.

When the results are broken down to urban and rural students, the numbers show that students in urban schools scored higher (538) in every province than rural schools (523). The differences were especially pronounced in Alberta, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Students in Ontario's urban schools averaged 535, while rural students averaged a score of 520, for a provincial average of 533. All three numbers are close to, but below national averages. Alberta recorded the highest overall score, averaging a score of 550. Their rural students, with an average score of 536 out-performed urban students in many other provinces. Urban scores were a national high 557. New Brunswick was the lowest scoring province with urban students averaging 510 and rural students 491, for an overall of 501.

Statistics Canada defined urban schools as those located in areas defined as either a census metropolitan area or a census agglomeration; all other areas were classified as rural. A census metropolitan area of 100,000 or more and includes all neighbouring municipalities where 50 percent of more of the labour force commutes to the urban core. A census agglomeration has an urban core of 10,000 to 99,999 and abides by the same commuting rule as a census metropolitan area.

Overall, Canada placed well in early PISA statistical projections, ranking second, fifth and fifth in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy respectively amongst the 31 participating countries. Japan, Korea and Finland consistently placed highly in each of the three categories Brazil, Mexico and Luxembourg comprised the bottom three in each category.

Future PISA tests will be conducted in 2003 and 2006 amongst the OECD member countries.

For More Information: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/021125/d021125b.htm http://www.pisa.oecd.org/