Ontario Making Progress to Ensure Inclusive Education System

Ministry of Education

Province Promoting Equity in Parent Engagement

Oakville, ON – Feb 22, 2018

Ontario is making progress towards ensuring the education system is more equitable and inclusive for all students and their families, by providing training to trustees and supporting parental engagement from Indigenous and racially or ethnically diverse communities.

Indira Naidoo-Harris, Minister of Education, and Kevin Flynn, MPP for Oakville, were at W. H. Morden Public School in Oakville this morning to make the announcement.

Since announcing its first-ever Education Equity Action Plan, Ontario has been making important strides to ensure equity across all aspects of publicly funded education. Examples of Ontario’s progress include:

• Training for Trustees on Equity, Ethics and Governance – providing intensive professional development to an initial 60 trustees from across the province to provide them with the information and skills development on the most pertinent ethical and equity governance issues facing Ontario’s school boards, equipping them with the knowledge, strategies, tools and tactics to navigate challenging situations.
• Collecting voluntary identity-based student data – working with 15 school boards to develop a consistent approach to data collection, including race, ethnicity and socio-economic status of their students. This first phase of work will inform the process for the collection of voluntary student data across the province, and is in alignment with the mandate of the Anti-Racism Directorate.

Applications are now being accepted until June 5, 2018, for Parents Reaching Out Grants for the next school year, with focus this year on equity and inclusion. Special consideration will be given to projects that support the engagement of parents from Indigenous, racially or ethnically diverse communities.

Ensuring an equitable and inclusive education system is part of Ontario’s plan to create fairness and opportunity during this period of rapid economic change. The plan includes a higher minimum wage and better working conditions, free tuition for hundreds of thousands of students, easier access to affordable child care, and free prescription drugs for everyone under 25 through the biggest expansion of medicare in a generation.

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