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Pan-Canadian Education Indicators Program (PCEIP)
What is the PCEIP?
The Pan-Canadian Education Indicators Program (PCEIP) is a joint effort between Statistics Canada and the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC).(f.2) The objective of the program is to develop a set of statistical measures that will provide policy makers and the general public with information about the performance of education systems in Canada in order to support decisions about education priorities. The set of indicators is intended to reflect both the scope of the education systems in Canada and the concepts of lifelong learning and accountability.
What is an education indicator?
Education indicators are statistics that, when examined together, can help measure the collective well being of the education system. Indicators should be policy-relevant and problem-oriented. The underlying nature of an indicator is its ability to compare groups, make comparisons over time and/or make comparisons to established standards and benchmarks. Indicators provide a snapshot of current conditions and can be a first step towards the understanding of policy issues.
Indicators are not intended to identify causes or provide solutions. They can be used to help gauge an education system, but without other supporting evidence, indicators cannot provide a diagnosis or prescription.
A set of indicators defined within a specified framework can be used to represent a complex system such as education. While no indicator system is likely to contain all the important indicators and yet remain manageable, a balance can be achieved between a comprehensive representation of the existing education system and the development of a manageable set of indicators.
The PCEIP Indicator Set
The objective of the PCEIP is to develop a set of pan-Canadian indicators that is sufficiently comprehensive to reflect the complex nature of education in Canada, yet is manageable in terms of its production and maintenance over time. It is generally agreed that the PCEIP indicator set must be able to accommodate changing educational policy requirements...