Council of Ministers of Education, Canada

Assessment Matters! Issue 21 - Does How Science Is Taught Relate to Science Achievement in PISA?

Assessment Matters! is a series of policy-oriented research notes designed to explore educational issues in Canada and Canadian jurisdictions. These notes are based on the results of international and national assessment programs, including the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP), the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

Categories: Assessment and evaluation, Education data and research

Business Case and Implementation Plan of a Pan-Canadian Credential Assessment Centre for Internationally Educated Teachers

During the course of 2020-21, under the leadership of the Registrars for Teacher Certification Canada (RTCC), members from participating provincial and territorial regulatory bodies for the teaching profession, met several times to develop a pan-Canadian approach for assessing the credentials and the language competency of internationally educated teachers. These discussions and pan-Canadian approaches served as the foundation for developing a business model that would sustainably support operations of the pan-Canadian qualifications assessment centre for internationally educated teachers

Categories: Foreign credential recognition, Teachers and teaching

PCAP 2019 Technical Report

PCAP is highly complex methodologically, requiring intensive collaboration among stakeholders. The PCAP 2019 Technical Report describes those methodologies, along with other features that have enabled PCAP to provide high- quality data. The information gained by this pan-Canadian assessment provides ministers of education with a basis for examining the curriculum and other aspects of their school systems.

Categories: Assessment and evaluation, Education data and research, Elementary and secondary education, Literacy

CMEC Indigenous Education Data Webinar Series February – April, 2021

In February and April 2021, the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) hosted a webinar series that brought together participants from across Canada for a discussion on Indigenous education data.

The webinar series focused on elementary and secondary education, exploring topics such as student completion pathways, data-sharing agreements, approaches to self-identification, use of Indigenous data, and linking quantitative and qualitative data. The list of topics was developed from discussions with provincial and territorial Indigenous Education Committee members and was informed by feedback from Indigenous education partners who have attended and participated in several of CMEC’s events pertaining to Indigenous education, such as the 2018 CMEC Symposium on Indigenizing Teacher Education.

Categories: Indigenous Education, Education data and research

PCAP 2019 Report on the Pan-Canadian Assessment of Mathematics, Reading, and Science

The Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP), a collaborative effort among Canadian provinces and territories, is a survey of the knowledge and skills of students in Grade 8/Secondary II in the core subject areas. The 2019 report describes the performance of Grade 8 students in the fifth administration of PCAP, in which the major domain was mathematics and the secondary or minor domains were reading and science. CMEC developed PCAP to ensure the availability of statistically valid, comparable data on student achievement, which can be used by education researchers, policy-makers, and government officials to understand and make improvements to provincial and territorial education systems.

Categories: Assessment and evaluation, Education data and research, Elementary and secondary education