Ontario's Minister of Education Paul Calandra visits students at Highfield Junior Public School in Toronto on March 11.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Michael Holden is an assistant professor at the University of Winnipeg. He researches classroom assessment and works with teachers in Ontario, Alberta, and Manitoba to support student learning.
Earlier this month, the Ontario government introduced Bill 101, the Putting Students First Act. It’s a sweeping set of changes meant to overhaul how learning happens in K-12 schools, including plans to tighten the Ministry of Education’s control over local budgets and leadership teams, limit trustee powers, and mandate new assessment rules for grades 9 to 12.
The province’s Education Minister Paul Calandra says the act “puts learning first” so that Ontario’s education system can “remain focused on its core responsibility: student success.” How does Mr. Calandra plan to do that? By requiring that students be marked on attendance and participation (15 per cent in grades 9 to 10, 10 per cent in grades 11 to 12), adding mandatory written exams for all courses, and mandating the use of ministry-approved resources such as lesson plans and assessment tools.
At first glance, these might seem like good changes. Chronic absenteeism – when students miss 10 per cent or more of the school calendar – is a continuing problem, and the average teacher spends almost a quarter of their week on lesson planning and marking.
Mr. Calandra says these changes will “protect students and reinforce respect for the professionals who teach them.” A fine sentiment – if only it were true.
Editorial: A lesson in the importance of showing up
The correlation between attendance and grades is strong, but mandatory attendance doesn’t mean that students will learn. Devoting up to 15 per cent of students’ grades to having “bums in seats” says nothing about whether students have met key learning objectives. A century of research on grading tells us that when many different factors are packed into one number – attendance, participation, effort, achievement – grades lose their ability to communicate anything meaningful. Does a student with a 75-per-cent grade, for instance, understand 75 per cent of the content – or do they understand 60 per cent of the content but show up every day? Now I don’t know. That’s why, since 2010, Ontario’s assessment policy has told teachers to report learning skills separately from grades.
Attendance and participation matter, and we should do something about them. Decades of studies on absenteeism tell us that if children aren’t showing up, schools need to partner with parents, families and community organizations to build the habit of regular, willful attendance. Grading attendance only muddies the waters.
Mandatory exams have the same effect. High-school exams are sometimes better at predicting student performance than national assessments, and there are plenty of subjects where written exams make sense. But high school exams can spur higher dropout rates, especially for marginalized students, and don’t always lead to meaningful improvements in learning.
Mandatory pencil-and-paper exams make less sense in courses like drama, physical education, computer science, or the trades. Yes, those teachers can assess something in an exam, but many of our most important learning outcomes require an active demonstration of learning. That’s why Ontario’s assessment policy has set the standard that 30 per cent of students’ final grades come from a combination of exams and culminating activities. Sometimes an exam is best; sometimes a culminating activity is needed; sometimes teachers use both. The government used to recognize that context mattered.
Parents, are your children affected by the new school attendance rules in Ontario? Let us know
That leaves the last assessment change: mandating ministry-approved lesson plans and assessment tools. The government already has a list of approved textbooks, so maybe ministry-approved lessons will just be another form of teacher support. After all, lesson planning takes time, especially for new teachers, and not all teachers are expert planners.
But having ministry-approved lesson plans “available for the beginning of the 2026-27 school year” is a pipe dream. Ontario has more than 1,900 ministry-defined courses for grades 9 to 12. While the vast majority of these aren’t offered in every school, Ontario students take multiple courses every day for 196 days each year.
For instance, my alma mater Westdale Secondary School, in Hamilton, Ont., is offering around 230 courses next year. Is the Ontario government really saying it will develop the 22,000 lesson plans those teachers would need for a semester of “ministry-approved lessons”? Will those lesson plans account for variations in class size, class complexity, school resources, and student readiness? I doubt it.
Supporting student learning and respecting the professionals who teach them are worthy goals. Bill 101 aspires to do that, but ultimately fails in every measure. It gets an A for effort, though: At least it showed up.