St. Timothy Jr./Sr. High School was ranked highest among Cochrane high schools in the annual report card on Alberta secondary schools by the Fraser Institute and has the highest average ranking in the last five years.

The high school was ranked 31st among 197 schools on the list for the 2023 school year with a score of 7.6/10 and has an average ranking of 34th. 

Cochrane High School was ranked 62nd (6.7/10), below its five-year average of 36th. Bow Valley High School was ranked 127th (5.5/10), also below its five-year average of 99th.

Springbank Community High School was ranked higher than all of the Cochrane high schools, holding down 17th spot (8.1/10) with a five-year average of 11th.

The Report Card on Alberta’s High Schools 2023 ranks 197 public, Catholic, independent and charter secondary schools based on eight academic indicators generated from Grade 12 provincewide testing, grade-to-grade transition and graduation rates.

Excluded are schools with fewer than 10 students enrolled in grade 12 and schools that didn't generate a sufficiently large set of student data to enable calculations.

The report card is seen by the institute as the most easily accessible tool for parents to compare the academic performance of the province’s high schools.

“The report card offers parents information they can’t easily get anywhere else, about how schools perform over time and how they compare to other schools in Alberta,” states Peter Cowley, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, in releasing the report earlier this month.

Cowley says the data suggest every school is capable of improvement regardless of type, location and student characteristics, pointing to the example of how Fort Saskatchewan High is one of the province’s fastest-improving schools, climbed to a score of six (out of 10) in 2022 from a score of 4.5 in 2016.

“We often hear that schools can’t improve student performance because of the communities and students they serve, but the findings in our school report card suggests otherwise,” Cowley said.