school students across this country are getting set to graduate and figure out where they'll head next to study in Ontario competition to get into some of the top universities is fierce and that is because students grades are getting better and better all the time Mike Crawley's been looking into this actually found out it has been a trend so tell me what you've noticed in terms of marks and high schools Mike yeah so Heather the data show that the long-term Trend in Ontario is that grades have been creeping higher and higher over the course of the past decade or so before the pandemic and then since 2020 the marks have really spiked so for instance in the in the Toronto District School Board the average grade 12 Mark has jumped six percentage points in just a two-year period and prior to that it took 13 years for the average marks to to raise uh that's a similar amount and so you also see it evident in the high end of the spectrum with a grade 12 averages of students having a plus averages of 95 or better the proportion of those students who are getting into University programs with that kind of Mark has been rising so why is it happening happening I spoke with Kelly Gallagher Makai she is an associate professor at Wilford Laurier University perhaps Mark's in the early covid period may have been part of what teachers used to really encourage and support students and that strategy may have worked because what we did see is uh unlike the U.S we saw an increase in the number of students from all kinds of backgrounds going to post to University in particular and no major decrease going to college which is again very different from the U.S so that's very interesting the why it's happening in her estimation what about how it is affecting things the impact on universities and the students seeking to study there so for the universities the rising grades make it kind of challenging to assess the people who are applying especially when they've got large numbers of of kids with very very high marks all trying to get into those ultra competitive programs things like Commerce or engineering at the top schools the University of Toronto's Vice Provost who oversees admissions told me that these high marks can also make things difficult for students they may have an exaggerated sense of their own preparedness so that when they get to first year university uh it's it's often a bit of an eye-opener it's an eye-opener anyway but I think it can be particularly difficult for students who didn't realize that maybe their grades were not an accurate reflection of their preparedness now despite all of that Dwayne Benjamin from the University of Toronto says that the rate of their students successfully progressing on from first year to second year does not actually appear to be dropping