Common menu bar

• Français
• Home
• Contact Us
• Help
• Search
• canada.gc.ca

Breadcrumb

1. Home >
2. Publications and Resources

Reading skills of young immigrants in Canada: the effects of duration of residency, home language exposure and schools - June 2008

• Previous
• Table of Contents
• Next

4. Descriptive Results

The purpose of this section is to explore the relationship of some of the key immigrant and first generation characteristics, including the length of residency in Canada, the language spoken at home and gender, with their reading proficiency in PISA 2000.

Figure 2 provides a simple descriptive summary of the population of 15-year olds in Canada in 2000. As described before, three separate groups of students were identified: native born, first generation and immigrant born students (see definition in section III). Each bubble in Figure 2 provides information on the average reading scores by immigrant status. The OECD average was set at 500 points.

Click here to enlarge

In Canada, the mean reading scores of native and first generation students were not statistically different (537.5 and 539.5 respectively), but immigrant students scored lower on average (515.6). This 24 point difference was equivalent to roughly half a year of schooling (Willms, 2004). However, all three groups scored well above the OECD average of 500.

Figure 2 further illustrates the distribution of reading scores among the three groups by the language spoken at home and the length of time spent by immigrant youth in Canada. It is clear from the figure that whether or not a student speaks the test language at home is an important factor determining their reading scores. Among the native born students, a difference of 42 points was observed, similar to the one observed among immigrant students. The difference was much smaller among the first generation immigrants (26.7 points).

Secondly, among immigrant students who were born outside Canada, the age at which they immigrated to Canada is of importance. Those who have been in Canada for 5 years or more (arriving before age 10) scored 39.3 points higher than those who had been Canada for 5 years or less (arriving after reaching age 10).

Figure 3 presents a breakdown of only immigrant students and their reading scores by both home language exposure and length of residency in Canada. Four quadrants were created, each representing a group of students with different lengths of residency and home language.

Click here to enlarge

As expected, increased length of residency in Canada was associated with higher reading scores irrespective of the language spoken at home. Similarly, irrespective of the length of residency, speaking the test language at home was associated with higher reading scores among immigrant students. Therefore, a student born outside of Canada, who had been in Canada for less than 5 years and spoke a language other than the test language at home faced a double disadvantage, scoring 21.7 points below the OECD average of 500.

The 2000 PISA results revealed that in all 32 participating countries, 15-year-old girls outperformed their male counterparts in reading literacy. In Canada, 32 score points separated boys and girls (OECD, 2001). Table 1 provides a breakdown of results among the three groups by gender. Among the first generation and native born groups, girls obtained the highest reading scores (555.2 and 554.3 respectively), and for boys there also were no differences between these two groups (521.7 and 521.0).

Males and females not born in Canada scored lower than their same gender counterparts; however, immigrant girls obtained higher mean reading scores than did the native born and first generation boys. Interestingly, the gender gap was almost identical between the three groups of students — roughly 34 score points. It is worth noting, that all six groups of students obtained reading scores at or above the overall OECD average of 500.

• Previous
• Table of Contents
• Next

Primary navigation (left column)

Date Modified:

2008-06-11