OTTAWA -- When it comes to education and performance, Canadian students are performing as well or even better than their peers in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom . As well, research by the Programme for International Student Assessment indicates a certain spending threshold has almost no relationship between the amount invested in education and student performance.
The program, administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development to its member countries, says that threshold is $50,000 U.S. per student. The report says the U.S., Australia and the United Kingdom all spend more than double that amount, but students in the three different countries did not score better, and sometimes worse, in last year's test than those in Canada, Ireland and New Zealand, which spends between 10 and 30 per cent less.
Overall, the organization says most countries have seen little improvement in their performance over the last decade, despite increased spending on schooling. Students in Canada and 10 other countries performed better than the OECD average in 2018.
The program assesses 15-year-old students on reading, mathematics and science, with the latest test focusing on reading in a digital environment.
