CMEC released the results of the sixth cycle of the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program, the PCAP 2023 Report on the Pan-Canadian Assessment of Science, Reading, and Mathematics, on January 12, 2026. In the spring of 2023, approximately 31,500 students in Grade 8 (Secondary II in Quebec), from more than 1,400 schools from across all provinces participated in the online assessment. Science was the major focus of the assessment. Reading and mathematics were also assessed. Note that PCAP was postponed by one year from 2022 to 2023, due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
PCAP is not tied to the curriculum of a particular province or territory but is instead a fair measurement of students’ abilities to apply their skills to real-life situations. It measures how well students are doing; it does not attempt to assess approaches to learning.
PCAP 2023 focused on science, defined through three competencies (scientific inquiry, problem solving, and scientific reasoning) as well as four subdomains (nature of sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, and Earth sciences). The subdomains intersect with each other, and the competencies are interwoven through the subdomains.
To provide a detailed understanding of what students know, understand, and can do, PCAP has developed useful benchmarks or performance levels that align a range of scores to levels of knowledge and skills measured by PCAP. For the major domain, which was science in 2023, PCAP used four performances levels, which provide an overall picture of students’ accumulated proficiency in science by the end of Grade 8/Secondary II. The performance levels in science were updated, with provinces using the Bookmark standard-setting method at the 2023 Standard-Setting Session. Performance Level 2 is the expected level of performance for Grade 8/Secondary II students.
PCAP 2023 also collected extensive contextual information from questionnaires completed by students, teachers, and principals. This information will be available at a later date.