Academic performance and educational pathways of young allophones: A comparative multivariate analysis of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver

Abstract

Using several local and provincial data banks enabling one to follow the school progression of the cohort of students who, in Canada’s three main immigration-destination cities, were expected to graduate secondary school in 2004, this article examines the academic performance and educational pathways of those students who at home use a language other the main language of schooling: non-French speakers in Montreal and non-English speakers in Toronto and Vancouver. First, after accounting for differences in characteristics, those students (target group) are shown to succeed better than the remaining students (comparison group), especially in Vancouver. However, within the target group, there appear to be substantial differences in performance between linguistic subgroups, which are far from being similar in all three cities. Second, the individual and contextual factors that influence the academic performance of the students in the target group appear to be similar for some and different for others in the three cities, while presenting some more-or-less large discrepancies with the corresponding factors pertaining to the comparison group. The article concludes with a few policy implications.