- British Columbia is perhaps the most open of the four Western provinces in terms of the school level data made available for students, parents, and the public.
- For every high school in British Columbia, one can download a “School Data Summary”, a 51-page document with five-year comparisons of achievement results, enrollment reports, school and community demographics, and even student and parent satisfaction survey results. If there is a complaint about British Columbia system of data collection and distribution, it is that there is not a more user-friendly comparison between schools.
- Alberta currently runs a close second to British Columbia in terms of the amount of school level information made available to the public.
- It scores extra points for the ease of accessing that data. Alberta makes available all exam scores, teacher assigned grades, final grades, and enrolment data at the school level on the Ministry of Education website.
- However, the overall breadth of data available publicly is less than that in British Columbia. As an example, one can find graduation and drop-out rates for every school in British Columbia, while only district level information is available for all schools in Alberta.
- What the province of Saskatchewan lacks in available school level data online, they make up for in cooperation with requests for that data. So while the data for the measures used is not publicly available in a standard report, the Ministry of Education was very willing to participate and respond to requests for school level information.
- The ministry provided school level achievement data for both its provincial Assessment for Learning Program and teacher-assigned grades in addition to a variety of measures on school enrollment demographics and engagement.
- Manitoba has the most limited access to valuable school level data. The department neither provides much school level data publicly, nor were they willing to provide many of the data points that are widely available in other Canadian provinces.
- The province does provide school level grade-by-grade enrollment data publicly. As well, the Manitoba Department of Education did provide student postal codes which enable a socio-economic profile to be constructed for schools (though at a 20 postal code cut-off for privacy purposes, leaving many schools with no data available).
- Manitoba does not, however, provide any school level results of provincial assessments, number of graduating students at schools, attendance, or track participation in post-secondary study. Attempts to gather this additional data from individual school divisions were met with similar resistance; however there were a few divisions willing to provide information for their schools.