English vs French Language Systems

Ontario's Education Act establishes two parallel school systems that write the same EQAO assessments on the same scale. The English-language system serves roughly 92% of students; the French-language system, serving Ontario's Francophone minority, accounts for the remaining 8%. Because they are structurally distinct — different student populations, different boards, different mandates — this page examines them side-by-side rather than collapsing them into a single provincial figure.

System Scale

How many boards, schools, and registered students are in each language system?

Students = registered for Reading (G3/G6) or all students registered for G9 Math. Boards and Schools counts exclude suppressed entities. G9 covers only students enrolled in a Grade 9 math course in that school year.

Provincial L3/4% for each language system over four years. Grade 9 is math-only.

Achievement Gap — English minus French

Positive values mean English-language schools scored higher; negative means French scored higher.

French Reading is the structural outlier. In G6, French-language schools consistently outperform English by 10–12 pp in Reading — an unusual reversal of the typical direction. In Math, the two systems are closer, with English slightly ahead in G3/G6 and French slightly ahead in G9 (2024–25).

Board-Level Distribution by Language

How spread out are boards within each language system? A tight cluster means the province benchmark represents most boards well; a wide spread means the average hides large variation.

━ Province average for that language system    ● Individual boards

The French-language system has 10–13 boards per grade vs 29–31 for English. Fewer boards means the box plots are less stable — a single outlier board has a larger effect on the displayed spread.