Assessing the Role of Provincial Education Systems and Reserve “Non- Systems ” in Interprovincial Variation in Aboriginal Student Performance

Many factors determine education outcomes. Among the hardest to isolate is the impact of alternate school systems. This paper decomposes incomplete K-12 rates for young adults (ages 20-24 at the time of the 2006 census) by province, by location within a province (urban vs. rural, on- vs. off-reserve), and by Aboriginal identity group (non-Aboriginal, Métis, Indian – First Nation). The optimum provincial education systems are defined as those generating the lowest incomplete K-12 rates among subsets of young Aboriginals. The optimum reserve school "system " refers to the reserve schools in the province with the lowest K-12 completion gap between young Indian-First Nation living on-reserve and living in rural or small towns in the same province. On a national basis, deviations from the optimum provincial performance account for a quarter to half of Aboriginal / non-Aboriginal gaps in K-12 completion rates. The province with uniformly superior on-and off-reserve outcomes is BC. The paper discusses institutional differences between BC and other provinces that may partially explain BC’s superior results.