Elementary school students across the Greater Toronto Area are performing just above the provincial average, according to the Fraser Institute's latest ranking of Ontario schools.

The average score for all GTA schools is 6.5 out of 10 this year, half a point above the provincial average of 6.

Some school boards fared better than others, with York Region District School Board scoring 7.3 and Durham District School Board getting 5.5 points, for example.

Of the 19 Ontario schools that scored a perfect 10 in the latest report card, 15 are in the GTA.

"It's good news, but obviously there's still a lot of room for improvement," Frasier Institute spokesperson Michael Thomas told CTV News.

He noted that almost 30 per cent of all standardized test scores in Ontario are still below the provincial standard. That number has dropped slightly since 2007, when 34 per cent of test scores fell short of the provincial target.

Fraser Institute's report card rates 2,695 public, Catholic, and francophone elementary schools based on provincewide reading, writing, and math tests administered to Grade 3 and Grade 6 students.

The tests are administered by Ontario's Education Quality and Accountability Office.

The report card also includes school-specific information such as parents' average income, the percentage of students whose first language is not English, and the percentage of special needs students.

Critics of the EQAO system say the province needs to look beyond standardized test to fully evaluate how Ontario's students are doing.

"Are the kids skipping out a lot, are they on time, are they engaged, are they taking part in extra curricular activities?" Annie Kidder of the People for Education advocacy group told CTV News. "Those are all sort of other ways of measuring the health and strength of a school."

The Ontario Ministry of Education says it's doing just that.

"We look at the achievement of our students. We don't rank schools," a spokesperson for Education Minister Laurel Broten said in a statement to CTV News. "We are committed to continuing to build on the success we've already had in boosting test scores and increasing graduation rates."

With a report from CTV Toronto's Ashley Rowe