B.C. students earn high marks in international education study

Canadian high school students are no slouches and B.C. students rank as some of the best educated in the country — and the world — according to a new international education study.

In the latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) international student assessment study, Canada and Finland are tied for fourth overall, behind only Japan, Estonia and Singapore.

• Canada's 15-year-old students among best global performers in science, math

The study is based on the test scores of over half a million 15 year-olds from 72 countries. It primarily measures science proficiency, with a lesser focus on math and reading.

In science, B.C. students scored above the national average when broken down province by province.

"From a Canadian perspective, students in Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia achieved higher average scores than the Canadian average, placing them among the top-performing participants globally," reads the study summary. 

No significant difference was detected between the performance of boys and girls in the province, nor in the performance of students in the francophone versus the anglophone school system in B.C.

B.C. students ranked the highest in the country in reading literacy and second highest in mathematics, although the sample size was smaller and fewer questions were asked in both those subjects compared to the science assessment.

More than 20,000 students from approximately 900 schools across 10 Canadian provinces participated in the assessment.