Federal Photos

Quality Counts: Canada

By Nicole Frugé — January 13, 2012 1 min read
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At the end of the school day, students head for the doors past a mural celebrating the cultural diversity at David Lewis Public School in the Toronto school system.
Artwork lines the wall outside Golriz Karoubi's 5th and 6th grade classroom at E.J. Sand Public School in Thornhill, Ontario. Students created profiles filled with their interests and personalities.
Yasim Hasan, right, asks her 2nd grade students at Crescent Town Public School in Toronto to point to their home counties during an English as a Second Language class. From left are Azman Nazim, 8, of Bangladesh; Nitya Khare, 7, of India; and Samanta Dam, 7, of Bangladesh.
Students play during recess outside Toronto’s Crescent Town Public School. The school is surrounded by mixed income apartment buildings that house many of the students. Designed to be a part of the Crescent Town community, the school offers programs for both parents and children.
Fourth grader Waleed Malik, 9, works on a reading assignment at Discovery Public School in Vaughan, Ontario.

For the 16th edition of our Quality Counts report—The Global Challenge: Education in a Competitive World— we went to Toronto to examine the methods used to educate students from large immigrant populations. Despite its geographic proximity, Canada’s education system differs in several ways from the United States. Many schools in the Toronto school district embrace their role as community hubs, an approach that some say embodies the strength of the Canadian education system.

A version of this article first appeared in the Full Frame blog.

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