25-64 Year Olds Without a High School Graduation Certificate or Higher

In early 2010, the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment, in collaboration with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, published a study entitled Pathways to Success--How Knowledge and Skills at Age 15 Shape Future Lives in Canada.

Among numerous conclusions linking high school performance with future opportunity, the study notes that "the longer term prospects of early labour market entrants, with only a secondary education diploma or less, as well as those who graduated late from upper-secondary school, are also of concern. They may fall victim to increasing competition for jobs from those better qualified in terms of job opportunities, stability of employment, and future earnings."

In many Northern regions of Canada, high school graduation rates are far lower than the national average. A random survey of 25 to 64 year olds in Ottawa, for example, would find that only one in every twelve people doesn't have a high school certificate. In Northern Saskatchewan and Nunavut, that number is close to one in two.

Source: The Conference Board of Canada.

Methodology

Data for "Total population 25 to 64 years by highest certificate, diploma, or degree" and "No certificate, diploma, or degree" were exported from Statistics Canada's Profile for Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Divisions, and Census Subdivisions, 2006 Census (catalogue number: 94-581-XCB2006001) using Beyond 20/20 Professional Browser. These data were imported into Microsoft Excel where percentages of the 25 to 64 year-old age group without a certificate, diploma, or degree were calculated by summing and dividing values grouped by Northern and Southern census divisions. Census divisions were then categorized as "less than one in three," "one in three to one in two," and "more than one in two." The table was created by deriving the average result for each region (that is, the average for all census divisions within each region). The RANK function in Excel was used to order the sequence of rows in the table.

About the Series

Here, the North is a bi-weekly series researched, written, and produced by The Conference Board of Canada's Centre for the North. The series is designed to illustrate similarities and differences--between Canada's North and South, and between Northern regions--in keeping with the Centre's mandate to provide policy-directed research to decision makers.

This issue of Here, the North was researched and written by Peter Wilson.