Education in Canada - Statistics & Facts

Nationally, Canada performs better than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average in all graduation numbers. In 2016, the share of adults in Canada with at least a minimum of high school education was around 91 percent. Canada also led the world in 2016 in percentage of the adult population that had a tertiary education (a bachelor’s degree or higher) with around 61 percent of those aged 25 to 34 years with a tertiary education. On the provincial and territorial level, British Columbia scored the highest on percentage of the population with at least a secondary education at 93 percent, while Nunavut was a distant last with only 61 percent of the adult population having graduated high school.

Education spending has been trending upward with the total national spending by Canadian school boards for 2015 at 58.14 billion Canadian dollars, a 75 percent increase since 2000. As of 2015, the largest budget item was instruction and education services, accounting for over 41 million Canadian dollars of the budget. Annual tuition fees for undergraduate degree programs in Canada were rising as well, but still remained well below the rates of their southern neighbor the United States. The average annual tuition for an undergraduate program nationwide was 6,838 Canadian dollars for the 2018-2019 school year. Despite the rising cost of postsecondary education, it still proves to be a valuable investment for Canadians. The unemployment rate for adults with only a high school diploma was 7.4 percent in 2017, compared to a rate of 4.4 percent among those with a university education.

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