On February 28, 2024, Statistics Canada released a report titled “High School Graduation and Post-secondary enrolment of Black, Latin American and other population groups: What explains the differences?” The report links B.C. K-12 student data such as course marks and graduation to national Post Secondary Information System, Census, and tax-file data to examine differences across racial groups in education attainment and post-secondary enrolment. Results are only provided at the provincial level.
The purpose of the Stats Can research was to compare the educational outcomes and post-secondary transitions of girls and boys when further broken down by racial groups. Indigenous student outcomes were out of scope of this specific research project.
Key findings included:
- Girls had better outcomes than boys in all circumstances.
- There were differences in outcomes amongst racial groups.
- No matter the gender or measure, outcomes for Latin American students and Black students were lower than all other racial groups.
- The outcomes for White students were not as low as Latin American students or Black students, but were generally lower than other racial groups.
- Korean students and Chinese students had noticeably higher outcomes than all other racial groups.
- Specific to boys graduation rates, the racial differences in the ‘on-time’ results were reduced with one additional year of study.
It is important to note that this Stats Can report does not employ the same approach taken by the Province of B.C. to integrate racialized community priorities and feedback through the introduction of the Anti-Racism Data Act (ARDA) in 2022 with associated research priorities in 2023. The first results of ARDA research derived from B.C.’s 2023 Demographic Survey will be available by June 1, 2024.