| Victoria Park Collegiate Institute | |
| Motto: | Perge et Perage "Take Action and Pursue our Goals with Enthusiasm" |
| Streetaddress: | 15 Wallingford Road |
| City: | Toronto |
| Province: | Ontario |
| Postalcode: | M3A 2V1 |
| Country: | Canada |
| Url: | https://schoolweb.tdsb.on.ca/victoriapark/ |
| Superintendent: | Cassandra Alviani-Alvarez[1] |
| Trustee: | Trixie Doyle |
| Principal: | Rick Tarasuk |
| Schoolboard: | Toronto District School Board |
| Schooltype: | High school |
| Type: | Public |
| Grades: | 9-12 |
| Language: | English |
| Area: | North York, Ontario |
| Colours: | Scarlet and Gold |
| Mascot: | Panther |
| Established: | 1960 |
| Enrolment: | 1174 (as of August 2021)[2] |
Victoria Park Collegiate Institute (commonly known as Victoria Park C.I., Victoria Park, Vic Park, VP, and VPCI); formerly Victoria Park Secondary School, is a collegiate institute in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located south of York Mills Road and west of Victoria Park Ave. in the district of North York. It is the first publicly funded school in Ontario to host the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. Authorized to offer the IB Diploma Programme since July 1987, the programme is taught in English. The school is open to male and female students. Some feeder schools include Milne Valley Middle School and Donview Middle School. The student population of Victoria Park Collegiate Institute is diverse, with a component of English as Second Language students (over 30%).
Victoria Park Collegiate Institute was officially opened to students in 1960. Its name derives from the nearby Victoria Park Avenue.[3]
Approximately two decades after its founding, Victoria Park C.I. became the first public school within Ontario to offer the International Baccalaureate Program.
In the late 2000s, a fitness centre was opened, the Brian Maxwell Fitness Centre.[4]
Between 2016 and 2018, renovations were made to the school, which included remodelling the gym, improving the track field, revamping parking lots. New additions included a resource room, cell phone charging station, and repainted walls and doors.
For the year 2010/2011,
Victoria Park C.I. was the first public school in Ontario to offer the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, beginning in 1987. Grade nine and ten students are admitted into a pre-IB program at Victoria Park where they are given the opportunity to gauge the IB curriculum. Individuals who wish to apply for the pre-IB program must complete a math test and then write a student application essay of 400-500 words. Afterwards, the applicant must attend an interview with the IB Coordinator in order to complete the application process.
IB graduates from Victoria Park C.I. consistently score in the top 10% worldwide, with many individuals in the top 5%. In the graduating class of 2013, 16 students out of 94 achieved a total score of 40 points or above, including one student who scored 44 points.
Sports offered at Victoria Park C.I. include:
Competitive clubs include:
VPCI also has its student-led orchestra that is not limited to students taking music classes.
VPCI also has a yearbook committee who works every year to deliver and design the school's annual yearbook.
Victoria Park C.I., like all high schools in the TDSB, has a resourceful library. The library offers over 20 workstations, two computer labs, independent study areas, printing services, and photocopying service. The library is also the home to over a thousand books of all genres. The library occasionally holds fundraisers for the Hospital for Sick Children and much more.
Some programs on the hundreds of computers (which run on Windows 7 and Windows 10) are Turing programming software, Microsoft Office 2010, and graphic editors such as Adobe Photoshop. The Accelerated Reader software is offered, with which grade nine students are encouraged to read and are tested afterwards on the content of the novel they chose. Victoria Park CI also has many carts of laptops which run on Windows 7 as well.
The White Pine high school reading program started in Victoria Park C.I. in the spring of 2003. Every year at the beginning of semester two, a meeting is held in the school library to gather students who are interested in participating in this reading program. All books nominated for White Pine are young adult fictions written by Canadian authors. The ten nominated books are introduced to the students who will have to read at least seven out of the ten selections to be eligible to vote for their favourite book.
A meeting takes place every three weeks in the library where students get an opportunity to discuss, with their peers as well as other teachers, about the books they have read. The voting for the favourite book takes place in mid-May at the school. After all the votes from across Ontario have been accounted for, teachers and students of Victoria Park C.I who have participated in the White Pine reading program are then invited to the ceremony where the winning author of the nominated books is announced.