Regional Indicator 7: Secondary School Graduates

	Why It's Important Levels of education tend to correlate strongly with future personal prosperity and well-being. With the "knowledge" content of most jobs steadily increasing, high school graduation is deemed essential as a base qualification for other "higher learning."

Regional Indicator Seven represents the number of Grade 12 students who have graduated in the school year beginning in the year noted including those graduating as a result of August provincial exams. It is expressed as a percent of the 18 year old population on July 1st of that year. Both public and independent schools are included.

The Vancouver CMA had a graduation rate of 84.5 percent in 2006. This was higher than the rates in the Abbotsford CMA (76.2 percent), the Victoria CMA (71.9 percent) and Regional BC (77.7 percent).

All regions in BC have seen growth in the graduation rate. Between 1997 and 2006, the ratio increased by 6.0 percentage points (9.1 percent) in the Victoria CMA, 13.3 percentage points (18.7 percent) in the Vancouver CMA, by 5.5 percentage points (7.7 percent) in the Abbotsford CMA, and by 12.0 percentage points (18.2 percent) in Regional BC.

The Vancouver CMA's average annual growth rate for the graduation rate was 1.7 percent between 1997 and 2006. The equivalent rates for the other areas considered are: Victoria CMA (0.8 percent), Abbotsford CMA (1.5 percent), and, Regional BC (1.9 percent).