Yukon students are far behind their Canadian counterparts in math and science, according to a 2007 assessment by the Council of Ministers of Education.

In science, Yukon students scored the lowest in the country and were edged out by Prince Edward Island for last spot in mathematics, the council reports.

In reading comprehension, the territory's students fared slightly better but still lagged behind the national average.

The Yukon was the only territory to participate.

The provinces took a sampling of their 13-year-old student populations - numbering in the thousands - while the Yukon tested its entire 13-year-old population.

Education Minister Patrick Rouble deflected criticism in the legislature last Thursday.

He refused to face the media afterward, instead forwarding all questions to the department.

Christie Whitley, an assistant deputy minister of education, said the small Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) test sample of Yukon students - 300 13-year-olds - does not provide an accurate representation of the territory's total student population.

"What's probably better to look at are those test results that we use on a regular basis like the YATs (Yukon Achievement Tests) or the B.C. Provincial exams," she said.

"All of our kids write those and every year they do favourably, our Grade 9 scores are certainly as good as their Alberta counterparts and our Grade 12 students write the English B.C. exams and perform better (than students in B.C)."

Dave Webber, a Yukon Liberal Party researcher with 30 years' teaching experience, questions Whitley's rendering.

While Webber agreed that the confidence level of the results reflects the lower number of Yukon students who wrote the test, but compared to other jurisdictions, the shortfall between the territory and the national average remains.

"There's still a big gap between Canada's lowest possible score and Yukon's highest possible score," said Webber.

"Whitley's right when she says that the numbers aren't as accurate for the Yukon ... but we're still significantly out."

Webber did acknowledge that based on the YATs, Yukon students are faring well compared to students in Alberta, but the PCAP rates student ability from across the country.

"This isn't some Mickey Mouse test that a graduate student did and put out," added Webber. "I would think it's one of the most acurate and reflective tests anywhere in Canada."

Quebec and Ontario students were tops in mathematics, scoring higher than the Canadian average, and Alberta had the best science students, according to the PCAP.

The good news is that the Yukon's female students' reading skills ranked higher than the Canadian average for males, and were not significanly lower from those of Canadian females overall.

Jim Tredger, president of the Yukon Teachers' Association, views the results in a similar way to the Education department's opinion.

"The larger provinces took a sampling of their (student) population and we did all of our population, or the majority of, and even that did not give a really good sampling size," Tredger said in an interview today.

"Traditionally, we've done as well or better as other jurisdictions across Canada but we're going to examine these results because we want all the information we can get to improve our teaching."

Tredger also noted that students in rural areas of the country generally don't do as well as urban students do, "and we would be considered rural."