Ontario Academic Credit - Victory Lap

Victory Lap

Patrick Brady and Philip Allingham of Lakehead University have argued that the provincial government's attempt to bring Ontario in line with the rest of the continent's 12 grades system has only been partially successful. While the fifth year of secondary education was formally eliminated, both have noted that the fifth year in secondary schools is still a norm in Ontario, with students in Ontario still opting to take a fifth year in secondary school, colloquially known as the victory lap.

In the first few years after OAC had been eliminated, more than 32 percent of students returned for a fifth year. The percentage of students who opt for a fifth year has since decreased between 15 percent to 20 percent, with some predicting it to level out around that level. In the 2007-2008 year, students over the age of 19 made up 3.7 percent of all secondary day school enrolment in Ontario.

Both Brady and Allingham note that the motivations behind the victory lap can be traced to the province's history of a fifth year of secondary school education, making it a basic assumption of secondary school life for students in Ontario. They also note that it may represent a form of transition anxiety, as students seek to prolong their secondary education, which can be seen as a safe environment, or to acquire further maturity before moving on to their post-secondary education. They also note the how the centrality of secondary school life can make a student prolong it. While they found it was not a universal phenomenon, they noted a number of students who returned for a fifth year primarily to continue their participation in the school's non-academic programming. In Brady's and Allingham's study, they had also found differences between genders. While close to half of male participants in their study opted to spend a fifth year in secondary schools, only one in five females choose to do so. They also noted that the motivations of both genders differed, with females opting to victory lap in order to gain additional academic credits, while males primarily opted for a fifth year in order to participate in sports and to gain maturity.