Every year, hundreds of Ontario schools bring every Grade 3 or Grade 6 student to the provincial standard in at least one subject, and the leading boards come within a few points of it in Grade 6 reading.
Summary
A common reply to criticism of Ontario’s EQAO results is that a perfect result is not realistic: some students will always fall short, so no school or board can be expected to bring every child to the provincial standard. EQAO’s own data shows otherwise, at two levels: individual schools reach it every year, and the leading boards come close in Grade 6 reading.
- In 2025-26, 104 schools had every fully participating Grade 3 student at or above the provincial standard in at least one of reading, writing and mathematics, and 356 schools did so in Grade 6. Counting every student in the grade, with absent and exempted students treated as not meeting the standard, 52 Grade 3 schools and 175 Grade 6 schools still did so.
- These are not only small schools or schools in well-off neighbourhoods. In 2025-26, 73 schools with 30 or more fully participating Grade 6 students had every one of them at the standard in reading, and 16 Grade 3 schools and 44 Grade 6 schools at 100 per cent were in neighbourhoods where 15 per cent or more of children live in low-income households.
- It is not a one-year event. From 2021-22 to 2025-26, 22 schools had every fully participating Grade 6 student at the standard in at least one subject in all five years.
- Whole systems come close, and all of them can improve. In Grade 6 reading, about 94 per cent of students in Conseil scolaire Viamonde (40 schools with a Grade 6 reading result) and the District School Board of Niagara (78 schools) met the standard in 2025-26. In Grade 6 mathematics, 24 per cent of girls at Viamonde and 36 per cent at Niagara were below it. Like all 72 district school boards on the 2026 Board Report Card, both were rated Not met on all three policy reviews.
Smaller schools reach 100 per cent more easily, and income is measured by neighbourhood rather than by family, so these counts show what is possible, not what every school should expect this year. Every student at the standard is possible. The question for each school and board is how close it is, and what the schools already there are doing.
1. Introduction
Whenever EQAO results are published or mentioned, someone replies that the expectation is unfair: no school or board can bring every student to the standard, so a result well short of 100 per cent is as good as can be expected. This article tests that claim against EQAO’s school-level open data for Grades 3 and 6 from 2021-22 to 2025-26, including the 2025-26 files EQAO posted in October 2026 (EQAO 2026a).
The question is narrow. It is not whether every school should reach 100 per cent, or why some schools do. It is whether a result in which every student meets the provincial standard happens in Ontario’s public schools, and how close whole boards come to it. The data answers both directly.
2. What a Perfect Result Means
A perfect result here does not mean a perfect test paper. EQAO reports students in four achievement levels, and Levels 3 and 4 are the provincial standard. A school is counted at 100 per cent in a subject when the number of its students at Level 3 or 4 equals the number of students who completed that assessment (EQAO 2026b). Rounded percentages are not used, so a school at 99.6 per cent is not counted.
EQAO calculates school results for fully participating students, the students who completed the assessment (EQAO 2026b). Absent and exempted students are left out of that count. At the schools at 100 per cent in reading in 2025-26, exempted students were a slightly larger share of all students than at reporting schools overall, counting all students together (5.3 per cent against 4.5 per cent in Grade 3, and 4.0 against 3.5 per cent in Grade 6). That is why this article also applies a stricter test: every student in the grade, with any student who was absent, exempted or has no result counted as not meeting the standard. Both counts are reported.
EQAO does not publish a school result where fewer than 10 students took part, so the smallest cohort counted here is 10 students. Virtual and remote schools are left out of every school count, because a virtual school can draw students from across a whole board and its result can rest on a small share of them: in 2025-26 one virtual school was counted at 100 per cent in Grade 6 reading on results for 27 of its 122 students. Leaving virtual schools out lowers the counts slightly; it does not raise them.
3. How Often It Happens
Figure 1 shows the number of schools at 100 per cent of fully participating students in each subject, by grade and year. Table 1 gives the same counts, with the totals and the strict count in the last column.
Figure 1. Ontario schools where every fully participating student met the provincial standard, by grade and subject, 2021-22 to 2025-26
Table 1. Ontario schools with every student at or above the provincial standard, 2021-22 to 2025-26
| Grade | Year | Reading | Writing | Math | At least one subject | All three | Strict count, at least one subject |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 2021-22 | 64 | 34 | 16 | 84 | 8 | 38 |
| 3 | 2022-23 | 83 | 45 | 20 | 115 | 7 | 62 |
| 3 | 2023-24 | 71 | 26 | 42 | 106 | 4 | 48 |
| 3 | 2024-25 | 81 | 38 | 40 | 109 | 9 | 55 |
| 3 | 2025-26 | 77 | 43 | 40 | 104 | 16 | 52 |
| 6 | 2021-22 | 303 | 227 | 5 | 433 | 4 | 192 |
| 6 | 2022-23 | 270 | 219 | 1 | 404 | 1 | 218 |
| 6 | 2023-24 | 292 | 125 | 11 | 347 | 7 | 187 |
| 6 | 2024-25 | 244 | 199 | 15 | 342 | 9 | 182 |
| 6 | 2025-26 | 253 | 223 | 13 | 356 | 11 | 175 |
Source: EQAO school-level open data, Grades 3 and 6 (EQAO 2026a); School Board Research analysis. Virtual and remote schools are not counted. The strict count includes every student in the grade, with absent, exempted and no-result students counted as not meeting the standard.
About 3,400 schools report a Grade 3 reading result and about 3,200 a Grade 6 reading result each year. In 2025-26, schools at 100 per cent were 2.3 per cent of reporting Grade 3 schools in reading and 7.8 per cent of reporting Grade 6 schools in reading. Sixteen Grade 3 schools reached 100 per cent in all three subjects, the highest number in the five years.
Grade 6 mathematics stands apart. Only 13 schools reached 100 per cent in 2025-26. Province-wide, 52 per cent of fully participating Grade 6 students in English-language schools and 64 per cent in French-language schools met the standard in mathematics. In Grade 6, whole cohorts reach the standard in reading and writing far more often than in mathematics. In Grade 3 the pattern is different: about as many schools reached 100 per cent in mathematics (40) as in writing (43).
4. Not Only Very Small Schools
Small cohorts reach 100 per cent more easily than large ones, and the schools in Table 1 are smaller than average. In 2025-26, Grade 3 schools at 100 per cent in reading had a mean of 21.2 fully participating students, against 36.3 for all reporting schools. In Grade 6 the figures were 26.0 and 41.4. No single small school’s result should be read as proof of anything.
The result is not confined to small schools. In 2025-26, 73 schools with 30 or more fully participating Grade 6 students had every one of them at the standard in reading, and 69 did so in writing. On the strict count, 25 schools with 30 or more Grade 6 students had every student in the grade at the standard in reading, and 27 in writing. Among the largest cohorts at 100 per cent in 2025-26 were:
- Grade 6 writing: 81 students at Central PS (DSB of Niagara), on both counts.
- Grade 6 reading: 79 fully participating students at Lester B Pearson PS (York Region DSB); on the strict count, 67 students at Julliard Public School (York Region DSB).
- Grade 6 mathematics: 59 fully participating students at St Mary Catholic S (York Catholic DSB).
- Grade 3: 53 fully participating students at École élémentaire La Mosaïque (Conseil scolaire Viamonde) in reading and 53 at École élém. cath. Saint-Viateur (Le C.S.D.C. de l’Est ontarien) in mathematics; on the strict count, 44 students at Whitney Jr PS (Toronto DSB) in both reading and writing.
School and board names are as EQAO publishes them.
5. Not a One-Year Event
If a perfect result were luck, it would rarely repeat. From 2021-22 to 2025-26, 1,061 schools had every fully participating Grade 6 student at the standard in at least one subject at least once. Of these, 218 did so in three or more years and 22 did so in all five. In Grade 3, 354 schools reached 100 per cent at least once, 42 did so in three or more years, and one, École élémentaire Laure-Rièse (Conseil scolaire Viamonde), did so every year.
These are different children each year, so repeated results are unlikely to be chance alone. They may reflect how the school works, who it serves, or both.
6. Not Only in Well-Off Neighbourhoods
The Ministry of Education publishes, for each school, the percentage of school-aged children who live in low-income households, drawn from census data for the neighbourhoods the school’s students live in (Ontario Ministry of Education 2026). Among schools with a 2025-26 EQAO reading result, the middle school is at 10 per cent, about one school in five is at 15 per cent or more, and about one in ten is at 20 per cent or more.
Schools at 100 per cent are less common in those higher-poverty neighbourhoods, but they are not rare. In 2025-26, 16 of the 103 Grade 3 schools and 44 of the 354 Grade 6 schools at 100 per cent were at 15 per cent or more, against about one in five of all schools. At 20 per cent or more, the counts are 8 Grade 3 schools and 21 Grade 6 schools, against about one school in ten. On the strict count, 7 Grade 3 schools and 13 Grade 6 schools at 15 per cent or more had every student in the grade at the standard. Neighbourhood income matters, and some schools in higher-poverty neighbourhoods still bring every student to the standard.
The Ministry’s figures describe neighbourhoods rather than the families at each school, are mostly rounded to the nearest 5 per cent, and come from its preliminary 2024-25 release. About half of the schools counted at 15 per cent or more sit at exactly 15 per cent (8 of 16 in Grade 3 and 23 of 44 in Grade 6), which is why the counts at 20 per cent or more are also given. A few schools have no figure.
7. A Second Level: Whole Boards
The same question can be asked of a whole system. A board’s result is the share of all its fully participating students at the standard, as EQAO reports it. In 2025-26, across the six Grade 3 and Grade 6 assessments, 85.4 per cent of results in Conseil scolaire Viamonde (40 schools with a Grade 6 reading result) and 83.8 per cent in the District School Board of Niagara (78 schools) were at the standard. On the 2026 Board Report Card, these are the leading French-language and English-language boards on that measure (School Board Research 2026). In Grade 6 reading, both had about 94 per cent of students at the standard: across dozens of schools, about six students in every hundred short of all of them.
The Penetanguishene Protestant Separate School Board, a board with a single school and 39 fully participating Grade 6 students, had 97 per cent of them at the standard in reading and in writing in 2025-26, the highest of any board record in either subject. In Grade 6 mathematics it had 51 per cent. A board can be close to every student in one subject and far from it in another, which is why each subject has to be read on its own. The Penetanguishene board is not one of the 72 district school boards on the Board Report Card.
No board record reached 100 per cent in any subject in 2025-26. In Grade 6 reading, the distance between the leading boards and every student is a few points, not a gulf that cannot be crossed.
Both leading boards can still improve. In 2025-26, Viamonde had 79.9 per cent of Grade 3 students at the standard in writing and 78.6 per cent of Grade 6 students in mathematics; Niagara had 79.9 per cent in Grade 3 writing and 68.2 per cent in Grade 6 mathematics. In Grade 6 mathematics, 24 per cent of girls and 19 per cent of boys at Viamonde were below the standard, and 36 per cent of girls and 28 per cent of boys at Niagara. Being a leading board is not the same as reaching every student, and the same is true of each of the 72 boards on the Board Report Card.
Strong results are not the whole of a board’s record either. Like all 72 district school boards on the 2026 Board Report Card, both leading boards were rated Not met on all three policy reviews (School Board Research 2026). On their public websites as reviewed between 22 September and 8 October 2026, Conseil scolaire Viamonde met 4 of 8 Code of Conduct (PPM 128) requirements tested, 0 of 14 Bullying Prevention and Intervention (PPM 144) requirements tested and 4 of 15 Accessibility (AODA) requirements tested; the District School Board of Niagara met 4 of 8, 5 of 14 and 5 of 15. EQAO results and policy reviews measure different things, and strong results in one do not make up for gaps in the other. Parents can expect both from all 72 boards.
Each board’s results are on the Board Report Card (/board-report-card/). A board that considers a result wrong can use the board response form (/board-report-card/respond/), and members of the public can use the public report form (/board-report-card/report/).
8. What Others Have Found
This is not the first time perfect results have been discussed in Ontario, but earlier work has measured something different. The Fraser Institute’s annual report card gives schools an overall rating out of 10 built from nine indicators drawn from EQAO results, including average levels and the percentage of tests below the standard (Cowley, Emes and Shang 2026, 5). In news coverage a rating of 10 is reported as a perfect score (Fox 2015), but it is a composite ranking, not a count of schools where every student met the standard. Some schools that received a perfect 10 in the 2013-14 rankings, such as Hollywood PS and Arbor Glen PS in Toronto (Fox 2015), appear again in the 2024-25 lists of schools at 100 per cent used here.
The C.D. Howe Institute compares each school’s EQAO pass rate with the rate predicted from its students’ socioeconomic background, using three years of results and only schools with at least 30 students over that period (Johnson 2025, 4, 8). Its pass rate counts all students in the grade, so absent and exempted students count as not passing, the same basis as the strict count in this article (Johnson 2025, 4). It warns that annual pass rates at small schools can fluctuate a great deal from year to year, and its first finding is that high EQAO results are possible “at schools where students come from disadvantaged backgrounds” (Johnson 2025, 3).
Two Ontario studies have asked successful schools why. In earlier fieldwork, Johnson visited 13 schools in six boards whose results were above the level predicted for them; teachers most often cited effective teaching, collaboration across grades and some targeted preparation for the assessment (Johnson 2025, 20). Flessa, Gallagher-Mackay and Ciuffetelli Parker (2010) visited 11 Ontario elementary schools serving communities affected by poverty and interviewed more than 100 administrators, teachers and parents. They found that the schools made connections with parents and the wider community and built a sense of collective effort within the school. Neither study chose schools because every student met the standard, and the schools counted here have not been asked.
The caution about small schools is long established. Wainer (2007) showed that in Pennsylvania small schools were over-represented among both the highest-scoring and the lowest-scoring schools, as statistics predicts for small samples. Kane and Staiger (2002) found the same pattern in school-level test results in North Carolina. That is why this article reports cohort sizes, the strict count, results that repeat across years and whole-board results, rather than relying on single-year results at small schools.
The searches made for this article found no published count of the Ontario schools where every student met the provincial standard.
9. Every Student at the Standard Is Possible
Every student at the provincial standard is possible. It happens every year in Ontario schools under the same curriculum, the same assessment and the same provincial rules: in large schools and small ones, in higher-poverty neighbourhoods as well as better-off ones, on the strictest count, and at the same schools year after year. At the level of a whole board, the leading systems come within a few points of it in Grade 6 reading.
It does not happen everywhere, and this article does not show why it happens where it does. Smaller cohorts reach 100 per cent more easily, neighbourhood income matters, and Grade 6 mathematics lags well behind Grade 6 reading and writing. No board has reached it. What the data rules out is the claim that it cannot be done in a school.
School Board Research measures boards against the leading board rather than the average. The same principle applies here: the useful comparison for a school with half its students below the standard is not the provincial average but the schools that bring every student there, and the useful comparison for a board is the boards that come closest. Each of them, the leading boards included, still has students below the standard.
Board-level EQAO results, including the results for boys and girls, are on the Board Report Card (/board-report-card/).
10. Data, Method and Limitations
Data. EQAO’s Grade 3 and Grade 6 school-level achievement results for 2021-22 to 2025-26, published on EQAO’s Open Data page (EQAO 2026a). School and board records were used. Socioeconomic figures are from the Ministry of Education’s School Information and Student Demographics file for 2024-25 (preliminary), joined on school number (Ontario Ministry of Education 2026).
Method. For each school, grade, year and subject, the number of fully participating students at Levels 3 and 4 (cntOverallR_L34, cntOverallW_L34, cntOverallM_L34) was compared with the number of fully participating students (cntFullyParticipating_Read, _Write, _Math). A school is counted at 100 per cent only where the two are equal. The strict count compares the same Level 3 and 4 count with the number of students in the grade (cntStudents_Read, _Write, _Math). A school reports a subject only when EQAO publishes a percentage for it; results marked N/R, N/D, S. R. or A/D are not counted. Each subject is counted on its own base: in 2025-26, 55 Grade 3 schools reported mathematics but not reading or writing. Virtual and remote schools (names containing “virtual”, “virtuel” or “remote”) are excluded from school counts. Repeat counts are by EQAO school number; matching by school name within each board instead changes them by one at most. Field meanings are from EQAO’s 2025-26 field definitions (EQAO 2026b). Provincial figures are EQAO’s English-language and French-language provincial records for fully participating students and may differ from EQAO’s headline figures, which are reported for all students. Board figures in section 7 are EQAO’s board records, summed across the six assessments for the overall figure. Higher-poverty neighbourhoods are schools where the Ministry reports 15 per cent or more of school-aged children in low-income households; results at 20 per cent or more are also given.
Limitations. EQAO does not publish results for cohorts under 10, so the smallest cohort counted is 10. Smaller cohorts reach 100 per cent more easily. Counts of fully participating students leave out absent and exempted students, which the strict count addresses. The analysis counts results; it does not explain them and does not adjust for the students or communities a school serves. Schools are named only as EQAO publishes their results. Every EQAO and Ministry figure was recomputed from the source files by an independent check before publication; the policy review results are as published on the Board Report Card.
References
Cowley, Peter, Joel Emes and Max Shang. 2026. Report Card on Ontario’s Elementary Schools 2025. Vancouver: Fraser Institute. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/report-card-ontarios-elementary-schools-2025
EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office). 2026a. “Open Data.” Grade 3 and Grade 6 Achievement Results, 2021-2022 to 2025-2026. https://www.eqao.com/results/open-data/
EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office). 2026b. “G36_2026_Aggregate_Field_Definitions.” Grades 3 and 6 field definitions, 2025-2026. https://www.eqao.com/results/open-data/
Flessa, Joseph, Kelly Gallagher-Mackay and Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker. 2010. “‘Good, Steady Progress’: Success Stories from Ontario Elementary Schools in Challenging Circumstances.” Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy 101. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ883756.pdf
Fox, Chris. 2015. “Seven Toronto Schools Achieve Perfect Scores in Province-Wide Rankings.” CP24, 1 March 2015. https://www.cp24.com/news/seven-toronto-schools-achieve-perfect-scores-in-province-wide-rankings-1.2258803. Archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20161001001251/http://www.cp24.com/news/seven-toronto-schools-achieve-perfect-scores-in-province-wide-rankings-1.2258803
Johnson, David. 2025. Signposts of Success: Ranking Ontario’s Elementary Schools. Commentary 691. Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute. https://cdhowe.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Commentary_691.pdf
Kane, Thomas J., and Douglas O. Staiger. 2002. “The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16 (4): 91-114. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/089533002320950993
Ontario Ministry of Education. 2026. “School Information and Student Demographics, 2024-2025 (Preliminary).” Ontario Data Catalogue, last updated 14 September 2026. https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/school-information-and-student-demographics
School Board Research. 2026. “Board Report Card 2026.” Board snapshot and Code of Conduct (PPM 128), Bullying Prevention and Intervention (PPM 144) and Accessibility (AODA) report cards, published 15 October 2026. https://schoolboardresearch.ca/board-report-card/
Wainer, Howard. 2007. “The Most Dangerous Equation.” American Scientist 95 (3): 249. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-most-dangerous-equation
Legal disclaimer. School Board Research is not a law firm, its researchers are not lawyers, and nothing in this article is legal advice. The results are research findings about documents published on board websites, read against a written method, available on request, on the dates stated. They are not findings that any board has contravened Policy/Program Memorandum 128, Policy/Program Memorandum 144, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 or any other law; only a regulator, the Ministry or a court can make that finding. A reader who needs advice about their own situation should consult a lawyer.
School Board Research publishes independent analysis of Ontario school board data and policy. We are not lawyers, and nothing in this publication is legal advice. If you identify an error, please write to info@schoolboardresearch.ca. Corrections are noted on the page where they are made.
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