The Pan-Canadian Education Indicators Program (PCEIP) is a joint venture of CMEC and Statistics Canada, working as the Canadian Education Statistics Council in collaboration with the provincial and territorial departments and ministries with responsibility for education and training. The goal of the program is to provide consistent and high-quality information on education for all of Canada to support informed decisions-making, policy formulation, and program development.
PCEIP has two streams. One stream facilitates the comparison of educational systems in Canada's provinces and territories and at the pan-Canadian level with those of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The report, Education Indicators in Canada: An International Perspective, 2011, released on September 13, 2011, is the third in a series intended to facilitate these comparisons.
The other stream is focused on harmonizing data across Canada's jurisdictions. The report, Education Indicators in Canada: Report of the Pan-Canadian Education Indicators Program, provides information on a Canada-wide basis as well as for each jurisdiction. The first indicators were published in 1996, with subsequent reports based on revised indicators. Key tables from the report are updated twice annually.
The reports entitled Education Indicators in Canada: Report of the Pan-Canadian Education Indicators Program contain information under five main headings
- A portrait of the school-age population, including population size, cultural diversity, and family background
- Financing education systems, including total expenditures on education, public and private expenditures on education, and student debt
- Elementary-secondary education, including early years and school readiness, enrolments, educators, secondary school graduation, student achievement, and information and communications technologies
- Postsecondary education, including enrolment, completion and graduation rates, educators, research and development, literacy, and educational attainment of the population aged 25-64
- Transitions and outcomes, including transitions to postsecondary education and the labour market and labour market outcomes