The cognitive processes involved in mathematical computations are varied and complex as are the ways in which students learn and develop mathematical skills. While it is not possible to assess all important aspects of students' mathematical skills with a single assessment instrument, it is possible to make some observations about specific aspects of students' mathematical abilities.

On a biannual basis, students in grades 5, 8, and Math 20 complete an assessment instrument that is designed to assess their mastery of curriculum objectives. The assessment instrument for students in Grades 5 and 8 includes thirty multiple-choice items and nine open-ended questions. Mathematics 20 students complete forty multiple-choice questions and three open-ended exercises.

The assessments for all grades measure three broad student performance outcome areas. These include:

• Math content skills Please note that for Grades 5 and 8, mathematics content skills are separated into two categories called: Concepts, Procedures, and Relationships (CPR), and Applications and Problem-Solving (APS).
• Integrated Applications (a series of open-ended questions intended to assess students application of mathematics understanding), and
• Estimation skills (two 2-part questions requiring students to make estimations without using a calculator and communicate the strategies they used to arrive at their answers).

Grades 5 and 8 students also completed a four-item exercise sheet designed to measure their computation skills without using a calculator.
Student performance results for each grade are reported in four ways:

• Absolute terms how did our students perform overall,
• Provincial comparisons how did our students perform in comparison to their provincial peers in any given year,
• Longitudinal comparisons how did our students perform from one assessment to the next in absolute terms and in comparison to provincial results (Please note: According to Ministry documents, each years assessment is unique with different test items, and although the assessment is designed to be consistent and the standard-setting process offers a framework to scale for difficulty, there remains some uncertainty in year-to-year comparisons), and
• Changes in our students performance relative to changes in provincial results how much improvement or decline in performance did our students achieve in comparison to the amount of improvement or decline in performance of the provincial cohort from one year to the next.

Please note: Mathematics 20 was not assessed in 2011. All statistics indicate the percentage of students who achieved at the level of adequate or higher.

• Results