Ontario school boards are having to redirect funding from other areas of their budgets to meet the needs of special education students, the Auditor-General's report says.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
The number of students in Ontario with special education needs is growing, and school boards are spending hundreds of millions of dollars more than they get from the province to support them, according to a new report from Ontario’s Auditor-General.
Of Ontario’s 72 school boards, 46 collectively spent $397.9-million more than they received in special education funding in the 2023-2024 school year, the report found.
School boards have used money from other areas in their budgets to address the needs of special education students, Auditor-General Shelley Spence said in her report.
“This can negatively affect other education programs and services, impacting the daily lives of students, parents, guardians and teachers,” the report states.
The number of students with special education needs has increased by 7 per cent since 2014, compared to the 4 per cent growth in total student enrolment, according to the report.
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In total, there were 334,860 students with special education needs in Ontario’s public school system in 2023-2024, representing 16 per cent of all students.
Although government funding has kept pace with inflation, it has not kept pace with the growth in special education needs, Ms. Spence said at a press conference Tuesday.
The report highlighted several other areas of concern, including lengthy waitlists for students to receive assessments by specialists, absenteeism among educational assistants and teachers reporting difficulties implementing their students’ individual education plans (IEPs), among other issues.
Kate Dudley-Logue, vice-president of the Ontario Autism Coalition, said the report is proof that government is not adequately prioritizing a system in crisis.
“It’s an underfunding issue, but it’s also a lack of commitment, or will, to want to fix the problems that are facing students with disabilities in our schools,” she said. “The whole system is under complete strain.”
Education Minister Paul Calandra said it’s unclear whether the additional funding Queen’s Park has added to the education system in recent years is leading to better outcomes for students.
“For me, what’s most important is, what are the outcomes?” he said Tuesday. “This report does highlight that we’re moving in a proper direction, but ultimately more needs to be done – more consistency, better data collection and ensuring that what we’re doing, the money that we’re spending, has the results that are required to have the best outcomes for the students.”
The report found 59 per cent of teachers surveyed said they were sometimes able to consistently implement the accommodations and modifications outlined in IEPs, which are provided to students with special education needs, while 8 per cent reported they could rarely or never do so.
At three school boards examined by the audit, the annual learning goals spelled out in IEPs were found to be so vague that teachers struggled to assess students’ progress.
The audit also looked at wait times for assessments by specialists.
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At two of the three boards the audit examined – the Toronto Catholic District School Board and the Peel District School Board – 34 per cent of students in line for psychological and speech language assessments had been waiting more than one year. The third board, the Upper Canada District School Board, had no students waiting longer than a year for psychological assessments.
The report also found that educational assistants, who help with teaching, behaviour and other classroom tasks, are often absent due to “elevated stress and frequent student-related physical injuries.”
An average of 18 per cent of educational assistants were absent on any given day in the 2023-2024 school year. Their absences were unfilled by a qualified replacement between 49 per cent and 72 per cent of the time.
David Mastin, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, a union that represents more than 80,000 education workers, called the Auditor-General’s report “another damning indictment of a government that has abandoned its responsibility to Ontario’s most vulnerable learners.”
“After more than a decade of chronic underfunding and policy decisions that have stripped supports out of classrooms, school boards simply cannot meet the needs of children with disabilities,” Mr. Mastin said in a press release.
Chandra Pasma, the Ontario NDP’s education critic, said Premier Doug Ford’s policies are making schools unsafe.
“Students aren’t getting the support they need. It’s not safe for them, or for education workers,” she said in a release. “The Premier is spending millions on private jets and vanity projects, while school boards can’t even cover the costs of this broken system. His priorities have never been clearer.”