The Daily. Monday, December 3, 2001

Measuring student's skills and knowledge: The performance of Canada's youth in reading, mathematics and science

Two major publications that assess the achievement of 15-year-old boys and girls in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy in Canada and 31 other countries will be available December 4.

The first is an international report prepared by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which will be available at 5 am eastern time on the OECD's Web site (www.pisa.oecd.org). This report, Knowledge and skills for life: First results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, compares the performance of students in Canada with those in other nations.

The second is a pan-Canadian report, Measuring up: The performance of Canada's youth in reading, mathematics and science (81-590-XIE), which includes data on all 10 provinces. It is to be released at 11:30 am eastern time December 4 during a news conference at the Toronto offices of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC).

The Canadian report will be available at 11:30 am December 4 at http://www.statcan.gc.ca, www.pisa.gc.ca, and www.cmec.ca. Tomorrow's Daily will include an assessment of the performance of Canadian students compared with their counterparts in other countries; this will be available at 8.30 am eastern time.

Data for this project came from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a collaborative effort among member OECD countries. In Canada, PISA is administered through a partnership of CMEC, Human Resources Development Canada and Statistics Canada. About 30,000 Canadian boys and girls 15 years of age from more than 1,000 schools participated during the spring of 2000.

For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Client Services, Centre for Education Statistics (1-800-307-3382; 613-951-7608; fax: 613-951-9040; educationstats@statcan.gc.ca).