Only 40 per cent of high-school students in Ontario meet the provincial expectation of 90-per-cent attendance.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Daryl Sneath is a teacher and novelist.
There is no shortage of clichés when it comes to the importance of “showing up.” “Showing up is half the battle.” “Success is not about being the best, but rather showing up when others choose to stay home.” “Every day we show up we invest in our future selves, so don’t underestimate the power of attendance.”
The power of attendance is something the Ontario government is taking very seriously come the new school year. When high-school students return to their hallowed halls this month, a portion of their final grade in every class (15 per cent for grades 9 and 10; 10 per cent for grades 11 and 12) will be determined by their attendance and participation.
Many readers might agree with this policy. It used to be, after all, that if we made absence too much of a habit, a truancy officer would show up at our door. But it also used to be that we scratched out our lessons on slate tablets, not digital ones. An argument based on tradition is not argument enough. And it remains to be seen whether assigning marks for showing up will help solve the attendance problem all that much.
Calandra’s comments spark confusion over Ontario’s new high school attendance rules
Let’s look at some numbers. Only 40 per cent of Ontario high-school students meet the provincial expectation of 90-per-cent attendance, which means 60 per cent of students miss more than nine days per semester. More troubling are the statistics we don’t have an accurate handle on: By how much do these students miss the standard? Ask a high-school teacher you know and they will likely say many students miss the standard by a lot more than nine days. For the two Grade 12 courses I taught this past spring, it became commonplace, a mere month into the semester, to have at least a third of the students absent – every day. Colleagues cite similar numbers.
The new attendance rule has historical precedent: In the 1990s, students who accrued 10 unexcused absences in a course ran the risk of losing that credit, regardless of the mark they had attained. The problem with the new policy, though, lies in the implementation. As soon as poor attendance lowers a student’s overall mark such that it’s not what a student (or their parents) say they need or want, such that scholarships and acceptances to university programs fall into jeopardy, it will be nearly impossible to make the poor attendance mark stick. Unexcused absences, for many, will magically become excused.
According to the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, 52 per cent of graduating students receive and accept offers to university programs. When we consider the number who do not meet the provincial standard for attendance but still manage to earn grades high enough to be accepted into university, the lesson being scratched out here becomes very clear: Being present, for too many students, doesn’t really matter.
Ontario’s new legislation fails to address structural issues for school absenteeism, expert says
Aside from excused absences due to illness or participation in extracurricular activities, one of the major causes of the absenteeism problem comes from what the Grade 12 cohort affectionately calls “senioritis”: a severe decline in motivation, engagement, effort and quality of work as the end of high school draws ever nearer. Some wear their senioritis like a badge of honour; some see it as a rite of passage; some see it, quite plainly, as a right. It used to be that this condition arrived some time in May, with the nice weather and the school year’s end actually being near. Now it begins before spring has sprung. More troubling is the spread of the condition to and through the younger grades.
But let’s say the new policy has a positive effect. Say we inch toward the prepandemic success rate of 60 per cent of students attending 90 per cent of the time. The problem is that for too many students (including those who are already meeting the provincial attendance standard), their physical presence does not, by a long shot, guarantee their mental presence. Much of the time, the culprit for this problem is the cellphone.
Although much was made of Ontario’s cellphone “ban,” introduced in 2024, the plain truth is that cellphones still accompany students to class. Many students still resist giving up their phones, vehemently. Parents, too. If teachers made a situation out of every student who didn’t comply with the “phones away” rule, teachers and principals alike would have time to do little else.
Opinion: Ontario’s toothless school cellphone ban isn’t working. It’s time to rethink it
But perhaps the most important word in the new attendance policy – not to mention the trickiest to define, track and assess – is “participation.” Physical attendance in the classroom is objective: a student is either there or not. Participation is far more varied and nuanced.
The Ministry of Education’s foundational document, “Growing Success,” implemented in 2010, states that “teachers must use practices and procedures that ... relate to the interests, learning styles and preferences, needs, and experiences of all students.” This means, to take only one example, that if a student’s learning style or preference tends toward active listening and away from traditional methods of participation, such as hand-raising or contributing to class discussion, they cannot be penalized for that. But assessing active listening, just to stick with this example, is not so easy to do.
In short, measuring participation – which is an equal part of the 10 per cent to 15 per cent cited above, inasmuch as the rule states attendance and participation – becomes potentially as varied in its implementation as every student in every class for every teacher.
It’s easy to throw stones, as the saying goes, and also not very productive. The solution to the attendance problem is not an easy one. The intention behind the new rule does seem to be fair and thoughtful. The inevitably varied execution, though, may skew how fair and thoughtful the results.