Methodology
How Schoolward works
Schoolward is a decision-support platform — a way to compare Toronto schools and neighbourhoods, not a verdict on any child’s future. This page explains exactly how our signals are built, what they draw on, and where their limits are.
Where the data comes from
Schoolward draws on public and official sources: Toronto’s two largest boards (TDSB and TCDSB), publicly released EQAO assessment results, individual school websites, the City of Toronto’s 158 neighbourhood profiles, Census context, our own geospatial analysis of catchments and commutes, and manual editorial research where the public record is thin. Every school profile lists the sources behind it, so you can see where a number came from and check it yourself.
How the verdict bands work
Instead of a single score, Schoolward shows a band — for example, “Top 10% in Toronto.” Bands are built mainly from EQAO results pooled across multiple years, not a single year, and compared across all Toronto schools rather than a small local sample. Alongside the raw band we show a context-adjusted view: how a school performs relative to the demographic expectation for the students it serves. We use bands rather than one number because a single figure can’t capture a school, and false precision misleads more than it informs.
What “Not rated” means
Some schools carry no band. Independent schools don’t write EQAO, so there is simply no comparable public result to place them among Toronto schools — “Not rated” means unmeasured here, not weak. Where a cohort is very small, a year or two of scores can swing wildly, so we treat those results cautiously rather than presenting them as settled. When data is missing, we show it as missing. We never fill a gap with a guess.
What the data cannot tell you
Test results describe performance on specific provincial assessments in reading, writing, and math. They say nothing about the warmth of a classroom, the strength of a principal, the arts and music on offer, whether a child feels they belong, or how your child in particular will do. Those things matter enormously and don’t reduce to a band. That’s why every profile leads with eligibility, programs, class sizes, and commute — the concrete facts you can act on — and treats scores as one input among many.
Fairness principles
We do not use demographic proxies — income, language, immigration status, or the makeup of a community — as stand-ins for quality. A school is never penalized on Schoolward for serving a complex or higher-need community; that’s precisely what the context-adjusted view is for. Neighbourhood pages describe daily life — the schools, housing, childcare, parks, and transit that shape a family’s week — and never trade in coded judgments about the people who live there.
Verify before you decide
Schoolward is a research tool, not an enrollment system. Catchment boundaries, program eligibility, and application deadlines change, and the board or school is always the authoritative source — confirm the specifics directly with them before you make a decision. If you spot something that looks wrong on a profile, please tell us: email data@schoolward.ca and we’ll investigate and correct it.
See it in practice
The clearest way to understand the method is to watch it work on a real school.
