Ottawa school boards rank low in student performance, study shows

A new report is detailing students’ success across Ontario school boards, and both the public and catholic boards in the nation’s capital rank low.

Signposts of Success: Evaluating Ontario’s Elementary Schools is a study from the C.D. Howe Institute looking into which Ontario school boards are outperforming the rest. The author, a Wilfrid Laurier University professor, said it aimed to give parents insights into how boards compare across the province in terms of student learning and success.

“People say everything I find is common sense, and they’re right,” David Johnson, a professor of economics, told CityNews in an interview. “Everything that you find in this kind of analysis is, to a very large degree, common sense. What you’re doing is you’re documenting the size of the effect, and you’re documenting that it’s real.”

The study suggests that the performance of school staff played a key role in the success of students from a wide variety of backgrounds, regardless of whether they’re underprivileged or come from a strong family background.

One section of the report showcases how boards compare on the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) tests students take in Grade 3 and 6 in math and literacy. It used data from 30 boards (the largest selection with enough data), including the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) and the Ottawa Catholic District School Board (OCSB).

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The results show consistently that OCDSB is one of the lower-ranking boards when it comes to students’ learning in literacy and math at both testing levels. OCSB is also among the lowest, but does perform higher than Ottawa’s public board.

Both boards are ranked much lower than Ontario’s largest French Catholic school board, which runs several schools in the nation’s capital, the Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est (CECCE).

Generally, separate and private school boards outperformed public boards in the metrics measured in the report, and French-speaking schools outperformed all other schools. The Niagara District School Board and the Windsor Essex Catholic District School Board outperformed all other boards in the metrics measured in the study.

At the end of the 2024-25 school year, the provincial government announced it was appointing a supervisor within the OCDSB. The reason for the board to be under supervision from the ministry is because it has “completed depleted its reserves, incurred the lack of a financial recovery plan,” the government said.

The report brings up this fact and notes that of the five boards the province is overseeing, none of the boards are found to have strong student results.

“And in a number of cases, in the different assessments, these boards are among the weakest contributors,” the report reads. “This suggests that financial mismanagement and challenges in student performance may be linked.”

CityNews Ottawa reached out for comments from both the OCDSB and the OCSB.

With files from CityNews Kitchener’s Josh Piercey.