Every year, Pathways Canada’s Research and Evaluation team updates key statistics to showcase the impact of the Pathways Program. But behind these numbers are the experiences of students, tutors, and alumni—like Kashish, who graduated from Pathways Rexdale in 2018, became a tutor at the same program location, and currently works as an intern at Pathways to Education Canada.
We asked Kashish to reflect on some of these key stats.
Pathways to Education serves over 6,500 students across Canada per year.
Kashish: “As a student, my day to day mostly involved the approximately 200 youth who attended programing with me. However, seeing this statistic makes me realize just how many Pathways students across the country are working hard on graduating high school. I can only imagine what they have in store for our future!”
In the 2019-20 school year, the average graduation rate in the communities that Pathways serves was 77 per cent.
We often hear that youth from low-income neighbourhoods do not graduate high school because they are “unmotivated in school” or simply “unintelligent”. What the Pathways program means to me is that if we give these youth the right resources and support, anything is possible. All young people can thrive and graduate from high school if we give them the help they need—and that’s good news for our future.
68 per cent of Pathways students who graduated from high school in 2020 transitioned to post-secondary education or training.
The pandemic has brought on many disasters. At the program location where I went as a student and later became a tutor, I worried that some students may not be able to afford to pursue post-secondary education due to the high costs associated with it. Seeing this statistic gives me hope for the future, and I am relieved to know that the youth I helped have a much better chance at attending a post-secondary institution.
There are currently more than 300,000 young people living in low-income communities across Canada, where students often face barriers to their educational success.
It breaks my heart to learn that 300,000 young people in Canada do not have access to the same academic and professional opportunities as others do for reasons outside of their control. But as a student and a tutor of the program, I see the amazing things these youth accomplish every day. I believe in the power of programs like Pathways to lift up these thousands of young people and break the cycle of poverty through education.