In 2016 Cardus Education delivered its second report on the Cardus Education Survey for Canada. Those reports—and this—present findings from surveys examining outcomes for secondary-school graduates of independent schools and public schools. The Cardus Education Survey makes a significant methodological, theoretical, and empirical contribution to the research into religious schools in Canada and the United States and is the only study that uses repeated measures to report on the outcome of religious non-government schooling and compares it to public-school outcomes. One of the main problems with existing data is the lack of attention to diversity within the independent school sector. In addition, regional differences in the impact of independent schools on students’ lives have not been carefully considered.

This report concentrates on Ontario graduates in 2018, drawing on graduates between twenty-four and thirty-nine years old who attended one of the following sectors in Ontario: public, separate Catholic, independent Catholic, evangelical protestant, and non-religious independent.