A Roost Rating is a single 0 to 100 number with a letter beside it. This page tells you what went into the one on your child's school, and how much of it you should believe.
What decides the grade
Two sources, and you can see which ones your school actually has on its own profile.
| Source | What it is | How much of the grade |
|---|---|---|
| The survey (AEAM) | Alberta's annual survey asking parents, students and teachers what the school is like day to day | 62.5% |
| The exams (PAT) | How the school's Grade 6 students did on Alberta's provincial exams, averaged over three years | 37.5% |
Those are the numbers for a school with both sources, which is 261 of the 471 graded schools on FamilyRoost today. The other 210 have exam results and no survey, and there the exams decide the whole grade. A missing source is never counted as a zero against a school.
The reverse case does not get a letter at all. A school with survey results but no exam results is shown as "pending", not graded, and there are currently 52 of them, most of them K-4 and K-5 schools whose students leave before Grade 6. We could compute a survey-only number, and we have decided not to publish one: a letter built on a survey alone would look identical to a letter built on two sources, and it would not be.
So check which sources your school has before you compare it to anything. Two schools showing the same letter can be resting on different evidence, and each profile says which.
On top of that sits Roost field research, which is not a percentage. It is a human-checked adjustment for things neither a survey nor an exam can see, logged with its reason. Most schools carry none.
The one worth looking for is a grade-configuration change. If a school is being shortened from K-6 to K-4, a family that buys a house on the strength of its grade may find their child displaced in two years. The academics have not changed; the decision you are making has. It is one of only two flags that can move a score, both downward; the other is a documented school-internal incident. It counts until the change starts. After that, the school's grade span shows its new shape and the flag stays as a note. Field research never raises a score.
Why the survey counts for more than the exams
Because it is the wider measurement. An exam result is one cohort, one week in May, four subjects. The survey asks about safety, engagement and how the school is run, from three groups who are there every day.
That does not make it clean, and the survey page is blunt about how it is not: the people who answer are not a random sample of the people who attend, and the three groups routinely disagree with each other by double digits. A grade resting mostly on a survey inherits both of those.
Inside the exam share we use two statistics of the same exams, 70% the equated share meeting the Acceptable Standard and 30% the average mark, for stability rather than accuracy (why that split). They are two readings of one test, not two independent sources, and blurring that distinction is exactly what we fault single-number rankings for.
The number we show but do not score
The Fraser Institute's /10 appears on school profiles. It does not move the Roost Rating. It is 0.975 correlated with the average exam mark we already calculate, so counting it would count one set of exams twice. We show it because it is the number most parents have already seen, next to our own reading of the same exams, with both dates, and the full argument is here.
From sources to a tier
The blended score is capped at 95 (no school is treated as "perfect"), then mapped to a tier:
| Tier | Name | Score |
|---|---|---|
| A+ | Very strong | 85.0 and up |
| A | Strong | 77.2–84.9 |
| B | Solid | 70.3–77.1 |
| C | Fair | 59.9–70.2 |
| D | Developing | below 59.9 |
Across the 471 graded schools today that works out to 33 A+, 128 A, 131 B, 116 C and 63 D.
Why the cutoffs move. A letter places a school among the schools we rate, so when the exam window rolls forward a year we reset the cutoffs to keep each letter the same size. With Alberta's October 2026 results, the window moved to the 2023–24, 2024–25 and 2025–26 school years. The new Grade 6 Math and English exams are harder than the old ones, and that alone lowered almost every school's score; with the old cutoffs, that would have looked like schools getting worse. So read a letter that changed with this update as a school moving relative to the others, and check its profile for what changed. A missing score is shown as PND ("pending"), never as a D. If we don't have the data, we say so.
The same tie rule we apply to Fraser applies to us. Our number inherits the wobble in its ingredients: a single year of exam results can move about 11 points on a small cohort, and a survey year at a small school moves too. So treat two schools within about a point of each other as level, and treat a letter as a band rather than a ranking. A school at 77.3 and a school at 77.0 are the same school as far as this number can tell, even though one shows an A and the other a B.
Where we disagree with single-number rankings
Test-score rankings correlate heavily with neighbourhood income: they often measure the families a school enrolls more than the teaching a school does. That is the argument for keeping tests to a minority of the score, for surfacing survey and operational context alongside them, and for showing the Fraser number without letting it move ours. It is also why we cut a source that was mostly re-reporting a test we already read. The goal is a starting point for a conversation with a school, not a verdict on it.
This letter in context
Because test results partly reflect who lives near a school, some school profiles carry a short box called This letter in context. It shows how the schools most alike on two published Census figures are rated, so a letter can be read beside schools whose areas look alike on those figures, not only beside a citywide average.
The two figures. In Calgary, Airdrie, Cochrane, Chestermere and Edmonton they come from the 2021 Census, for the people living in each school's designated area (its catchment): the share of children in low-income households (based on 2020 incomes) and the share of adults aged 25 to 64 with no certificate, diploma or degree. We spread each small Census area's counts across the designated areas it overlaps, by area, assuming people are spread evenly within it, and add them up. These describe who lives nearby, not who enrols. The two can differ, most of all where families choose a school outside their area, at schools that also run a program of choice, or in Catholic districts, where a designated area is a priority area rather than a guarantee. The Census was taken in 2021, so newer neighbourhoods are thin or missing, and 2020 incomes include temporary pandemic benefits.
What it leaves out. The comparison uses only these two figures. It does not use ethnicity, immigration, language or Indigenous identity.
How the comparison is built. For each rated school, we take the 20 schools of the same board and level that are closest on those two figures (more when several are tied). The box shows only how many of them have each letter. It never names those schools, never shows a school's own figures, and never ranks one school against another.
When it appears. Only where the two figures measurably line up with results: across the board's schools at that level, the two figures must line up with at least 30% of the differences in Roost Ratings between schools. The box quotes that share, rounded down to the nearest 5%; the rest of the differences are not explained by these figures. Where the figures explain less, we show nothing, because a weak comparison would mislead. A school also needs its own letter and at least five rated schools in its group, and Statistics Canada must publish the figures for at least 90% of the people in its area (it withholds them for some small areas).
What it is not. It does not change any letter, and it is not part of the Roost Rating. It is context, the same way the exam-mark average is context: worth knowing, not a verdict.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Census Profile, 2021 Census of Population (98-401-X2021006) and 2021 Census Boundary Files (92-160-X). This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Classes and enrolment
Alberta school profiles also carry two facts about the school itself, published by Alberta Education: how big its classes typically are, and how many students it has had over the past ten years. Neither is part of the Roost Rating. They describe a school's situation, not how well it teaches, so we show them beside the rating rather than inside it.
Class size. For each grade band the school teaches (K to 3, 4 to 6, 7 to 9, 10 to 12) we show the typical class: the middle value of the class sizes the school reported for 2025/26, collected on November 24, 2025. Beside it is the typical class across all of the same board's schools in Alberta's release for those grades: the middle value of each school's own typical class, counting every school once. The profile also says how many classes each figure comes from.
A class here is one teacher with one group of students. A group taught by several teachers (a homeroom that also has a music teacher, for example) counts once per teacher, and in junior and senior high each course section counts. Classes under 10 students are not published, so the typical class leaves them out, and the profile says how many there were. Alberta's release does not cover alternative-program, outreach, online or special-purpose schools, or special-education classes, so some profiles show enrolment only.
Enrolment. The number of students enrolled in each school year from 2016/17 to 2025/26, as reported to Alberta Education. The latest year is preliminary: the province replaces it with final figures later, and we update when it does. Enrolment moves with boundary changes, new schools nearby, the grades a school offers and how many children live close by. Most schools here had fewer students in 2020/21, the first school year of the pandemic.
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Alberta. Sources: Alberta Education and Childcare, Alberta class size and Student enrolment by school, authority and grade level.
This page explains methodology only. Specific school scores come from the live dataset and show their own data-freshness date on each school profile.