Al-Manarat Heights, Mississauga, Tops the List of ‘Best Schools in Ontario in 2025’

Background: Did you know that the first ‘elementary’ school in Canada was established in 1785 in Kingston, Ontario? Well, now you do.

That said, most public schooling in the late 1700s and early 1800s was either church-controlled or run by local authorities.

The first standardized school testing system began after the establishment of the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) in Ontario in 1996. The Fraser Institute used the same system in its ranking of 3,052 elementary public, Catholic, and independent schools in Ontario to compile its list of the ‘Best and the worst‘ for the year 2025.

Why is this report critical? The authors of the report hope that the results and ranking will offer parents crucial information that they “can’t easily get anywhere else, about how their child’s school performs and how it compares to other schools in Ontario.”

From the schools’ point of view, this report underscores that all types of elementary institutions throughout the province, serving different student populations, are capable of improvement. For instance, Burleigh Hill, a public school in St. Catharines, was identified as one of the fastest-improving elementary schools in the province, rising from a score of 4.5 out of 10 in 2018 to 9.9 in 2024. Or Tyendinaga Public School, which went from a score of 1.6 in 2018 to 5.4 in 2024, even though 43.5 per cent of its students have special needs.

To help you understand the results of this report more clearly, here’s a quick overview of some terms used in the analysis:

– EQAO: Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office.

– All ratings are based on a maximum score of 10.

– School performance is measured against nine EQAO assessment indicators: 

1. Indicators 1-3: Grade 3, Reading, Writing, and Mathematics.
2. Indicators 4-6: Grade 6, Writing, Reading, and Mathematics.
3. Indicators 7-9: The difference in average achievement levels between male and female students in Grade 6 Reading and Mathematics, and the percentage of EQAO assessments that did not meet the provincial standard.

Note: This report comes with the disclaimer that not all Ontario schools are included in its results.

Congratulations to the 7 Islamic schools that ranked among the top 30.

They are:

– Al-Manarat Heights – Mississauga

– Al-Ameen – Brampton

– Al-Sadeq Academy – Windsor

– Alfajrul Bassem – Oakville

– Islamic Institute of Toronto – Scarborough

– Islamic School of Cambridge – Cambridge

– Safa & Marwa Islamic – Mississauga

For politeness’ sake, we won’t list the bottom 15 schools here. If you’d like to see that information, please write to us, and we will be happy to share the complete list with you.

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