Events

For two decades, PISA data has been sending Atlantic Canada a clear signal and policymakers have largely looked away. This presentation moves beyond average scores to show what is happening to the competencies of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science: not just what they can no longer do, but who they can no longer become. It documents the accelerating collapse in post-secondary and workplace readiness since 2009, maps the geographic and socioeconomic concentration of functional illiteracy and innumeracy across Atlantic provinces, and puts a human capital cost on a generation of unmet potential. The closing argument is deliberately uncomfortable: after two decades of decline, can twelve years of schooling still deliver what we need—and should we be asking whether K-14 is now Atlantic Canada’s repair bill?