Understanding the rural - urban reading gap - November 2002

3. How do rural and urban students and schools differ?

Previous

Contents

Next

The first stage in this analysis was an investigation of a variety of student, school and community characteristics to determine how rural and urban student populations differed and where those differences were consistent with differences in student reading performance. This information was then used in hypotheses about the determinants of the rural-urban reading gap.

Individual student behaviour

A variety of factors were available to describe student behaviours or the nature of students' relationships with others: reading behaviours, social communication with parents, student behaviour and discipline in the classroom (student group behaviours), student-teacher relationships and support from teachers. (See Appendix A for provincial data tables).

In terms of individual student behaviour and relationships with parents and teachers there were generally no differences between rural and urban students.

Generally, there were no systematic rural-urban differences in the variables that describe personal behaviours and relationships such as reading behaviours and social interaction with parents. Enjoyment of reading, for example, which showed a strong correlation with reading performance in the PISA study, was the same for rural and urban students in most provinces with two notable exceptions. In Newfoundland and Labrador and Alberta, rural students reported levels of reading enjoyment significantly lower than those of urban students.

For the most part, rural and urban students reported the same levels of social interaction with their parents. In addition, there was generally no difference in rural and urban student reports on the disciplinary environment of the school or the level of teacher support or student-teacher relations.

Family background

In all provinces, the parents of rural students had jobs with lower occupational status, on average, than did the parents of urban students⁶. The parents of rural students also had significantly lower levels of educational attainment than the parents of urban students, except in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia.

Rural students were more likely to come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

The first results of PISA 2000 showed that the number of books in the home is an important indicator of reading performance possibly as a reflection of a home environment that encourages reading. In Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Quebec, rural students reported significantly fewer books at home than did urban students, but elsewhere there was no difference in the proportion of students from homes with more books.

Rural students tended to come from homes with fewer cultural possessions and educational resources and they were less likely to discuss cultural, political or social issues with their parents.

The nature of interactions with parents was also an important factor in reading performance. Students' reading performance generally benefited from parents with whom they could discuss books, television shows, and political or social issues (parental academic interest). This is noteworthy, as urban students reported higher levels of this kind of interaction with parents in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta.

Urban students in most provinces reported significantly higher levels of home cultural possessions (such as classical literature, books of poetry and works of art) and educational resources (such as a dictionary, a quiet place to study, a desk, textbooks, and calculators). The exceptions were Nova Scotia and British Columbia. In Ontario, there was no significant difference in the presence of cultural possessions in the home and in Prince Edward Island there was no difference in levels of home educational resources.

Rural students were less likely to participate in cultural activities such as going to museums and attending concerts, likely because of access to cultural facilities. In most provinces, however, rural students were just as likely as urban students to participate in extracurricular activities at school and outside of school.⁷

Transportation

One variable of particular interest in this analysis because it is often cited in discussions about rural schooling was the amount of time students spent getting to school. Rural students in most provinces reported spending more time travelling to school than urban students. The only exceptions were Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec and Alberta where there was no significant difference in the proportion of students with long commutes. The likelihood of longer transportation times varied by province for both rural and urban students. About one-quarter of rural students in most provinces reported a commute of 30 minutes or more. The only exceptions were Newfoundland and Labrador, where only 7% of rural students reported transportation times of that length, and Prince Edward Island, where fully 42% of students commuted 30 minutes or longer.

Rural students spent significantly longer getting to school in most provinces.

Fewer urban students reported such long commutes, but there was an even greater range by province. In Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba and British Columbia, fewer than 10% of urban students had commutes longer than 30 minutes. At the other extreme were urban students in Prince Edward Island and Alberta where about one-quarter reported the longer commute times. ⁸ Overall, there was no consistent pattern between the differences in average transportation times and average reading performance for rural and urban jurisdictions.

Computer and Internet Use

While rural students were less likely to have access to computers and the Internet at home than urban students. . .

Rural students were less likely to have a computer or Internet access at home than urban students, but in most provinces the difference was small. Students in rural schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Quebec were the least likely to have a computer at home. The rural-urban difference was even higher in terms of access to the Internet. In Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec, one half or fewer of rural students had Internet access at home. In contrast, the percentage of urban students with home Internet access ranged from 62% in Quebec to 79% in Alberta. The only provinces without large rural-urban difference in home Internet access were Nova Scotia and Ontario.

Figure 3
Rural students are less likely than urban students to have a computer at home

Figure 4
Rural students are even less likely to have access to the Internet at home

While rural students were less likely to have access to computers and the Internet at home, they actually made greater use of computers at school. A higher proportion of rural students than urban students used computers more than once a month at school. In Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec, this difference was not statistically significant. In Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, rural students used the Internet at school significantly more often than urban students did.

they spent more time using a computer or the Internet at school than urban students did.

Education and career aspirations

Over 90% of Canadian 15-year-olds reported that they hope to get a postsecondary education. This is very high when one considers that, according to YITS, only 62% of 18 to 20-year-olds, who were no longer in high school in 2000, had gone on to postsecondary education (McMullen, Bowlby, 2002). Fully three-quarters of the 15-year-olds who would like to get a postsecondary education said they would like to get a university degree. To put this in context, of the 18- to 20-year-olds who had gone on to postsecondary institutions, only one-third actually attended a university in their first year.⁹

The vast majority of 15-year-olds would like to get some kind of postsecondary education.

The percentage of students who aspire to a postsecondary education was very high for both rural and urban students in all provinces (85% or more). Only in Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Manitoba were urban students significantly more likely to want to get a postsecondary education than rural students.

Rural-urban differences were more noticeable when it came to the decision to aim for a university rather than a college education. While the largest differences in university intentions were in Alberta and Quebec, only in Prince Edward Island were postsecondary preferences the same for both rural and urban students. In Quebec, there were particularly low rates of university intentions for both rural and urban students. This finding may be a reflection of the very different postsecondary education system that exists in Quebec where CEGEPs, the provincial system of community colleges which also provide a system of university preparation, play a very different role than colleges in the rest of Canada.

While most students, both rural and urban, aspire to a university education, the rate is significantly lower for rural students.

The rural-urban difference in the type of postsecondary education expected was also reflected in the career aspirations of students as measured by the occupational status of the job they expect to have when they are thirty years old. In all provinces, urban students had significantly higher career aspirations than rural students. As with educational aspirations, the career hopes of students in the Atlantic Provinces were not significantly different from those of other 15-year-olds across the country.

Rural students in all provinces also had significantly lower career expectations than urban students.

School characteristics

As part of the PISA assessment, principals were asked to report on the qualifications of teachers and to report on the extent to which teacher shortages and the adequacy of material and instructional resources hindered student learning. In terms of the percentage of mathematics, science and language arts teachers who have university level qualifications in their subject matter, in Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, urban school principals reported significantly higher levels of teacher specialisation than rural principals. Only in Prince Edward Island were rural principals more likely to report that teacher shortages hindered student learning.

Rural and urban schools are actually much the same when it comes to resources and learning environments.

This analysis is restricted to the schools that participated in the PISA study and the communities in which PISA participants went to school. The information on schools presented in this section was collected from questionnaires completed by the principals in the PISA sample of schools, that is, in schools attended by 15-year-olds. Community information was gathered from the Census for the communities where these schools were located. Because the PISA sample was developed to be representative of the population of 15-year-olds, the school information cannot be interpreted as representative of all schools, or all high schools, urban or rural. Nor is it representative of all rural and urban communities. This analysis describes, rather, the schools attended by the students in the study and their communities, and these characteristics are included primarily as possible factors influencing student performance, not as characteristics of urban or rural schools and communities overall.¹⁰

For the most part, there were no reported between the adequacy of resources in rural and urban schools. The exceptions were Quebec where principals were more likely to report that the school buildings were inadequate in urban schools, and Saskatchewan where principals reported that instructional resources were less adequate in rural schools than in urban schools.

Principals were also asked their perceptions of teacher morale and commitment and the degree to which they thought that negative teacher behaviour affected student learning. Although there was a great deal of variation in these measures between provinces, there was no clear trend with respect to urban—rural differences. Only in Saskatchewan and British Columbia did rural and urban principals report different measures of teacher morale and commitment. In Saskatchewan it was urban principals who reported the highest levels of teacher morale and commitment, and in British Columbia it was the rural principals.

Where there were differences between rural and urban schools, these were generally not consistent with the rural-urban reading gaps.

Overall, while there were some differences between rural and urban schools, these were not consistent with the rural-urban reading gaps. For example, reports of the proportion of teachers working in their area of specialisation differed significantly between rural and urban schools in some provinces with the large reading gaps and some with small or no reading gaps.

Community characteristics

While there were no consistent differences in the nature of schools in rural and urban communities, there were big differences in the characteristics of the communities themselves.

A variety of community characteristics were included in this analysis. These community variables were taken from the 1996 Census and PISA 2000. Although information from the 1996 Census does not reflect the conditions in the community at the time of the PISA assessment, it does provide an indication of the community that these students have likely been exposed to during their schooling. The analysis assumes that the community has not changed significantly in the four years between the 1996 Census and PISA 2000, and that the students have been exposed to that community in the interim. It also assumes that the aggregate characteristics of the parents of the 15-year-olds in the school are indicative of the community environment of the students.

This information describes the communities where the schools in the PISA study were located. This part of the analysis examined unemployment and employment rates, the percentage of white-collar workers in the community, education levels, individual and family income, and the percentage of young adults enrolled in postsecondary education.

As one would expect, there was a wide range in these community-level variables both between rural and urban areas and across the country. In all four Atlantic Provinces, the communities where rural schools were located had significantly higher rates of adult unemployment than the urban communities in the study. Elsewhere, the difference in unemployment rates in the PISA communities was not as pronounced. In Manitoba, the communities where rural schools were located actually had lower unemployment rates than communities with urban schools.

Rural areas had higher unemployment rates.

There were more notable differences in employment rates, which indicate the percentage of adults with jobs and therefore account not only for differences in the number of adults looking for work (unemployed), but also those who are not participating in the labour force at all. In all provinces except Prince Edward Island, Alberta, and British Columbia, adults in rural communities in the study were less likely to have a job than those in urban communities.

The differences in economic conditions of rural and urban communities were also indicated by the average individual and family income of the communities in the study. In most provinces, average individual income and average family incomes were higher in the communities where urban schools were located.¹¹

Adult populations in the areas where urban schools were located had higher levels of educational attainment in all provinces. The urban communities had higher proportions of adults with both any postsecondary education and specifically university education. These rates were also reflected in the proportion of jobs in the communities that typically require university education. Between 40% and 50% of the workforce in the urban communities were in these white-collar jobs. In all provinces, by contrast, less than 40% of jobs in the rural communities required university training. Only in Quebec was there no rural-urban difference in this white-collar employment rate.

Adults in rural communities had less education and fewer of them had jobs requiring a university degree.

The last community-level indicator included in this analysis was the percentage of young adults in the community who were enrolled in postsecondary education. This does not necessarily indicate the presence of a postsecondary institution in the community as the Census includes many students in the family home even when they are away at school. It does, however, provide some indication of the nature of postsecondary participation for youth in the community. In all four Atlantic Provinces and Saskatchewan, the rural communities in the study had the same proportions of youth enrolled in postsecondary institutions as the urban communities. Prince Edward Island, Manitoba and Alberta had the lowest rates of youth postsecondary participation in rural communities, and Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Ontario had the highest.

• ⁶Family socio-economic background was derived from student responses regarding parental occupation using the International Socio-economic Index of Occupational Status (see Appendix B for definition). This scale was also used to derive occupational status for student career aspirations.
• ⁷In Alberta and Ontario, the rural-urban difference in cultural activities is significant with a 95% level of confidence, but not at the 99% level generally used to measure statistical significance in this paper.
• ⁸In spite of these variations in the amount of time spent getting to school, there was no relationship between transportation times and reading performance. In fact, additional analysis of this data also showed that there was no relationship between transportation times and participation in extracurricular activities or a student's sense of belonging. However, issues surrounding the transportation of students to and from school are complex and extend beyond the impact on academic performance. Concerns over student transportation also involve matters such as student safety as well as the costs of transportation relative to school budgets. This analysis is unable to fully explore all of the elements of this issue, nor does it consider the possible impact on students of transportation times in earlier grades.
• ⁹It should be noted that this does not mean that many of these youth will not end up going to university, especially given the opportunities for university preparation and transfer programs in colleges and CEGEPs. As the 18 to 20-year old cohort of YITS are still at the beginning of their studies, it is still too early to determine the highest level of education they will attain.
• ¹⁰For the most part, the schools in the PISA sample are high schools or include high school grades. However, because the study is representative of 15-year-olds, it includes a mix of schools and grades as some 15-year-olds can be found in earlier grades in middle or junior high schools (as well as in more advanced grades in high schools). For this reason, school characteristics cannot be interpreted as characteristics of high schools, or even of schools including high school grades.
• ¹¹In British Columbia, the average income of individuals was higher in the urban communities, but this was not a statistically significant difference.

Previous

Contents

Next