Canada: Ontario to invest over $180 million to help students build maths, reading, writing skills

Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced the funding in a press conference Sunday to bring in over 300 educators to help boost math competency and some 700 other educators to improve student literacy.

The funding is the latest move by the province to help boost student performance in schools.

Low test scores, particularly for maths, have been a point of focus for the Doug Ford government for years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once the pandemic hit, lockdowns and shifts between virtual and in-person learning disrupted the learning which worsened or stagnated EQAO test scores and other skills.

“We’ve seen the decline in reading, writing and math skills, and today’s plan is a clear signal that we’re not going to sit idle, we’re not going to hope for the best,” said Lecce in the news conference.

“We’re going to invest through a comprehensive plan that really lifts the skills and the standards and frankly the ambitions of kids by making sure that they can exit their high school experience having mastered those fundamental skills.”

Of the total funding, more than $71 million will go toward a new maths plan for the coming school year, building off the math curriculum introduced in 2020, which mandates financial literacy and coding in every grade.

Lecce says $109 million will go toward boosting literacy rates starting this school year including hiring of additional specialist teachers to ensure over 400,000 students in senior kindergarten to Grade 2 are screened up to twice a year to make sure they’re meeting provincial standards.

Also included in this funding is an overhauled language curriculum starting September to enable young students to master basic literacy.

Lecce added that a lot of funds will go toward boosting outcomes in the lowest 20 percent of schools that have historically underperformed in math and literacy EQAO testing.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)