Canadian students are smarter than their peers in other developed economies, and Canadian teachers are among the best educators, according to Statistics Canada.
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Almost seven out of 10 Canadians aged 25 to 64 has completed some form of post-secondary education after leaving high school — be it some form of college, trade or vocational diploma (37 per cent) or bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral or equivalent degree (31 per cent).
That places Canada 24 per cent above the average of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) members. They include 35 developed economies in the Americans, Europe and Asia.
Looking at salaries, Canadian teachers with 15 years experience rank among the top five in terms of salaries, finishing fourth with a salary of $65,474 (US) behind the Netherlands ($72,778 US), Germany ($76,838 US) and Luxembourg ($109,734 US).
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Overall, Canada spent 5.9 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on all educational institutions in 2015/2016. (Primary, secondary and post-secondary respectively accounted for 3.4 per cent, 2.4 per cent and 1.6 per cent of GDP). The OCED average was 5.1 per cent.
So does Canada’s spending on education pay off? According to the 2016 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Canada finished sixth in the world, behind Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Macao, and Estonia. The United States finished 30th. This ranking comes with a proviso, as some have questioned the PISA methodology.
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