Peter Cowley

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Peter Cowley is a Senior Fellow and former Director of School Performance Studies at the Fraser Institute. He has a B.Comm. from the University of British Columbia (1974). In 1994, Mr Cowley independently wrote and published The Parent's Guide, a popular handbook for parents of British Columbia's secondary-school students. The Parent's Guide web site replaced the handbook in 1995. In 1998, Mr Cowley was co-author of the Fraser Institute's A Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia, the first of the Institute's continuing series of annual reports on school performance. This was followed in by The 1999 Report Card on British Columbia's Secondary Schools, Boys, Girls, and Grades: Academic Gender Balance in British Columbia's Secondary Schools, and The 1999 Report Card on Alberta's High Schools. Since then, Mr Cowley has co-authored all of the Institute's annual Report Cards. Annual editions now include Report Cards on elementary and secondary schools in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario and on secondary schools in Quebec.

Recent Research by Peter Cowley

— Mar 5, 2024
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Report Card on Ontario’s Elementary Schools 2023

Report Card on Ontario's Elementary Schools 2023 ranks 2975 public, Catholic, and independent schools based on nine academic indicators derived from provincewide test results. And contrary to common misconceptions, the data suggest every school can improve regardless of type, location, and student characteristics.

— Mar 5, 2024
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Report Card on Alberta’s High Schools 2023

The Report Card on Alberta’s Secondary Schools 2023, which ranks 197 public, Catholic, independent and charter secondary schools based on eight academic indicators generated from provincewide testing, finds that schools can improve student performance regardless of school type, location and student characteristics.

— Nov 18, 2023
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Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools 2023

The Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools 2023 ranks 468 public, independent, francophone and anglophone schools based on provincewide test results in French, English, science and mathematics during the 2021/22 academic year. In this year’s ranking, 45 schools showed statistically significant improvement while 38 schools experienced declining performance.