High school graduation

Fifty years ago, just over half the adult population had less than a Grade 9 education. By 2002, however, 45% of Canadians aged 15 and older had completed some form of postsecondary education.

In 2000/01, just under 77% of youth graduated with a high school diploma, up from 70% a decade earlier. The graduation rate was nearly 10 percentage points greater for young women than for young men: nearly 82% for women and slightly over 72% for men. However, the gender gap was even larger (13 percentage points) in 1995.

Most people are teenagers when they graduate from high school. The typical age of graduation is 18, except in Quebec, where it is 17. In 2000, 61% of students graduated at the typical age compared with 55% in 1995.  Over the same period, the rate of graduation after the typical age fell from 21% to 17%.

Many students graduate after the typical age. This is especially the case in Nunavut, where the older graduates represented about two-thirds of graduations and in the Northwest Territories, where they represented almost one-third of graduations.