V. Patterns of Camp Attendance

For some time over the operation of the camp, it had been suspected that certain schools and school boards were more proactive about encouraging young women to investigate projects like Discover Engineering. (Many of these boards have now been amalgamated into one large board of education for the City of Toronto, or the Megacity as it is known locally. Time will tell how this affects the attendance patterns.)

The attendance figures for a 5 year period are shown in Figure 4. The data shown are only approximate. In some cases, the number of female students in a particular board had to be estimated by dividing the total number of students by 2. As well, the number of female students in the private school system is very small (n=1,250), so the attendance rates may not be statistically significant. The data seems to indicate the following:

• As theorized in the educational equity literature, the single-sex girls schools appear to send more students than the co-educational schools. The Private and Metro Toronto Separate school board, both with single sex schools, show the largest ratios of participation.
• The numbers of attending students from private schools are large, but this is due to participation of a few particular schools. Other private schools very rarely send students to the camp. This may indicate the perceived status of engineering working class occupation, or it may reflect a perception of Ryerson as a "blue collar" milieu university.
• Even from the most proactive boards, the number of attending students is low: on average less than 5 students per thousand, over a 5 year period. It is difficult to believe that in some boards fewer than 2 students per thousand are interested in some aspect of applied science.

There are other interesting anomalies that show up in the raw data (not shown here). Two interesting examples:

• Some individual schools (in particular one all-girl Roman Catholic School) have been very proactive about sending students to the camp. Other schools have sent only one student over the 5 year period. Since the camp literature is sent out uniformly to all schools, it points to the differential impact of the material. Science teachers and guidance counselors, who may not be supportive of women pursuing nontraditional careers. Anecdotal evidence accumulates about guidance counselors still actively discouraging girls from such pursuits.
• Interestingly, a high school with special focus on science and high technology is one of the absentees, which is surprising. Perhaps students from this school are attending other projects geared towards attracting young people to sciences and engineering, or do not need this type of exposure.