Name
Measuring Educational Accessibility in Canada: A Canadian Accessibility and Remoteness Index for High Schools
Date & Time
Friday, May 23, 2025, 10:45 AM - 11:00 AM
Description

This study adapts the Canadian Accessibility and Remoteness Index (CARI+) methodology to evaluate high school accessibility across Canada at the Dissemination Area (DA) level. Using the Open-Source Routing Machine (OSRM) package in R (2024.09.0+375), and following the Accessibility / remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA+), we calculated travel time and distance from population-weighted DA centroids to the nearest high schools, categorizing accessibility into five classes. Using Manual classification, we found that 46.3% of Canada's population resides in "Easily Accessible Areas" for distance metrics (RI score <0.199), while 38.8% fall into this category for time metrics (RI score <0.176). The majority of Canadians (83.9% for distance, 85.3% for time) live in either Easily Accessible or Accessible Areas, with only 8.5% (distance) and 8.8% (time) in Remote or Very Remote Areas. All five classification methods showed a consistent pattern of declining population density as remoteness increases, with average population per DA dropping from 683-689 people in Easily Accessible Areas to 390-398 in Very Remote Areas. It is noted that the distribution varies significantly between methods, where Quantile classification produces more evenly distributed population percentages (20.2-22.5% across the first four categories) while overrepresenting rural areas, whereas Equal Interval shows 46-47% in Easily Accessible Areas. The most balanced representation comes from Manual and Jenks Natural Breaks methods, which align more closely with population distribution and geographical patterns. These findings highlight educational accessibility disparities and highlight the need for targeted interventions to address inequitable access to secondary education in Canadian remote communities.

Location Name
Mackenzie (ME) 3356
Session Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract ID
219
Speaker Name
Adel Yasin
Speaker Organization
Carleton University
Session Name
CS106 Measurement and visualization of rurality indicators