FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
14 March, 2011

Halifax/Winnipeg: The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy are releasing the first ever Report Card on Western Canadian High Schools. The report card ranks high schools from Manitoba and Saskatchewan based on the AIMS model, which has been used in Atlantic Canada for almost a decade.

The Report card can be found online at www.aims.ca. It looks at school performance in the 2005-06, 2006-07, and 2007-08 school years. As a result of the province’s refusal to make more comprehensive data available, Manitoba’s Report Card includes only the moving on rates for grades 10, 11 and 12, and attendance rates for a minority of schools.

The lack of publicly available school level performance data is in stark contrast to every other province in the country says Peter Holle, President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. ”Manitoba’s Department of Education lacks the transparency and openness required to inform parents, teachers, and taxpayers about how their schools are doing”, says Holle, “and it is regrettable that the Department did not show any willingness over the course of this project to increase the amount of information made available to the public.”

In Atlantic Canada, every province now reports more information than they did when AIMS started releasing its High School Report Cards. The AIMS/FCPP Report Cards on Western Canadian High Schools are expected to improve over time as more data is released by the school system.

“We hope that community concerns will prompt Manitoba’s Department of Education to make the information more publicly accessible in future,” says Charles Cirtwill, President of AIMS. “Our education systems can only improve when the public has more and better information to engage in the conversation.”


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For more information, please contact:

David Seymour
Policy Analyst
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
(306) 352-2915
[email protected]

Dr. Rick Audas
Lead Author
Atlantic Institute for Market Studies
709-749-2075
[email protected]