CASJ clarifies Filipino dropout rate

CASJ clarifies Filipino dropout rate

TORONTO – An article, “Filipino youth dropout rate, highest in Canadian schools,” authored by Aida E. D’Orazio, and posted May 27. 2011, in the e-publication, Munting Nayon News Magazine, was brought to the attention of the Community Alliance for Social Justice (CASJ) by some concerned Filipinos in the Phlippines and Canada.

The author of the article writes in the context of Filipino Youth Transitions in Canada (FYTiC), a collaborative research being conducted by a team of academic researchers led by Dr. Philip Kelly and CASJ.

That Filipino youth has the highest drop out rate in Canadian schools is not a finding that has been established in any research by CASJ or Statistics Canada, or FYTiC. In fact, there is a Statistics Canada finding in one of the studies (Ethnic Diversity Survey, 2002) referenced by FYTiC, that Filipino youth’s high school completion rate is one of the highest among immigrant groups. The study looked at education attainment among children of immigrants in Canada and it showed that 98.8 per cent of immigrant children whose parents came from the Philippines at least completed high school, second in rank to children whose parents came from China, which was at 99.2 per cent.

A later Statistics Canada study (Group Differences in Educational Attainment Among the Children of Immigrants, by Teresa Abada, Feng Hou and Bali Ram, published in September 2008), however, reveals that despite the high level of university completion rates of Filipino parents, the second generation Filipino youth in Canada showed one of the lowest university completion rates among immigrants groups. Related studies have also shown that second generation Filipino youth have lower incomes compared to other immigrant youth.

Shortly after the 2008 study, CASJ — having already done research on youth, and the deprofessionalized Filipino — was approached by some government policy and community people to find out, through research, what could be the reasons why this is so.

CASJ thus collaborated with Kelly for a study that would examine the reasons for the relatively poor university and employment outcomes of second generation youth. Thus, FYTiC was born and expanded to explore the unique experiences of Filipino youth in their transition to adulthood in Canadian society.

FYTiC research is now in its first phase of a three-pronged research process that spans three years (2010-2013). The research involves key informant interviews, youth questionnaire survey and focus groups. It covers four cities: Toronto, Hamilton, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

FYTiC website: http://www.yorku.ca/ycar/programmes_projects/FYTiC_home.html
CASJ website: http://casj.wordpress.com

(Mila Å. Garcia)