Thank you for listening to Depiction's Media Radio. Welcome to Policy Rights to show
about government policy and human rights. Welcome back to Policy and Rights here in
Depictions Media Radio. I'm your host, Michael Cloggs. Education is one of
the cornerstones to leading to a extraordinary and fantastic life. Learning what is around
us and what not only is on our planet, but what is out my
cosmos has been a cornerstone to my life and I couldn't have done it without
some of the basic skills that we need reading, writing, and of course
math. Now most people won't go much further than algebra, and many who
said the cosmos they study much more than that with advanced calculus and things like
that. But those skills that they learned in elementary school is what led them
down. These paths, led them to the thought processes, the logic paths
that they used to study. Many of school systems are falling short on these
ideas of the basic skills and some of the things that we actually need.
Maybe some of these things are being a little too much replaced by computers.
Maybe some of these things can be spent up with the right softwares of putting
it, putting them into automated systems. But we're going to hear from the
Ontario Education Minister, Stephen Lees as he talks about how Ontario is going to
improve the education system. But they're looking to improve the basics dal's first,
reading, writing, and math, and we'll learn how Ontario is going to
do it and we can watch to see where their successes are. So let's
listen to that segment now and maybe learn how we can help more kids across
Canada. Good morning, Thank you Wall. Thank you so much Patrese for
the introduction and for your leadership in the ministry. I want to just first
off give a quick shout out to our amazing host here at the Album Library
for welcoming us a brilliant space where literacy is promoted every single day and stem
education. And I also want to thank Alicia Smith from Dyslexia Canada and Kevin
Maynard from the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education for joining us for this important announcement.
We know that for your children to strive to reach their full potential,
we must ensure they master their foundational skills. Every day parents tells they want
their children's school to focus on the fundamentals improving reading, writing and math.
So today we're outlining our strategy to boost math and literacy skills in Ontario by
going back to the basics. In every stage of life, mastering mathematics and
reading is critical. Yet this province, and frankly around the entire industrialized world,
too many children are falling behind and the EQUAO data confirms this. We
have schools that have consistently underperformed in these fundamental skills. And so today we
are challenging the status quo, raising the bar all of us, from educators
to school boards, to governments to community working harder and smarter, eading to
better outcomes for your children. And so today Patrise and I are proud to
unveil on terrorist plan to boost literacy and math skills designed to deliver better schools,
better jobs and outcomes for your children. So first, we're going to
be investing more than one hundred and eighty million dollars in additional funding for the
coming school year focused on math and reading supports. Through this investment, our
government is supporting the hiring of nearly one thousand specialized math and literacy educators,
all designed to deliver better schools for your children. Now specific to math.
We're going to be investing more than seventy one million dollars in a new math
plan supported by the recently introduced modernized math curriculum that mandates financial literacy and coding
in every single grade. On tarist plan to boost math skills will hire hundreds
of specialized math educators. We will also double the number of school math teacher
coaches in classrooms. These are math coaches that are to provide direct hands on
support to both the teacher and to students in classroom that are falling behind.
To ensure school boards have one senior leader that is exclusively focused on improving math
competence and the training of our teachers with new strategies to lift math skills in
the classroom, will be funding one dedicated math lead in every single board.
They will spearhead math curriculum implementation. They will standardize the training and provide additional
supports for math coaches in schools and in classrooms. This is another accountability measure
we're introducing to help every single board lift their scores and the skills of their
kids. We're also enhancing skills of new teachers through dedicated training and covering the
costs of additional math qualification courses professional development to help enhance math fluency and competency
of our frontline educators. We're also going to be expanding financial literacy learning and
resources in the classroom to ensure more of the hands on practical learning like personal
budgeting, how to save, how to pay taxes or take a mortgage,
or live within one's means. And finally, we're going to continue to expand
access to digital math tools. That's the live teacher led virtual tutoring offered in
math. That is a lot, but to ensure these resources have impact,
we are also announcing the creation of a Math Action Team to drive improvement.
These are highly trained educators who will be seconded in the Ministry of Education and
deploy to those boards where we need to raise standards to improve the training and
the outcomes of our kids. The Math Action Team will drive improvement by working
with school boards to identify and recommend targeted, high impact teaching practices to improve
math achievement right across this province. It is an all hands on deck approach
to boost financial literacy and math skills in the classroom. Now, when it
comes to literacy, we know many young children have faced regression over the past
years. It's experienced parents around this country have said they've seen themselves. So
first, we're going to overhaul the entire language curriculum, which will be in
place this coming September. This curriculum will help every single child read, including
those kids with intellectual or developmental disabilities. And I'm pleased to announce our plan
to boost literacy skills through a historic investment of more than one hundred and nine
million dollars, the largest investment in the country to boost literacy because we take
this seriously, because if we don't intervene at the front end and course correct
these challenges for these young kids, it can lead to long term impacts.
It Literacy costs our productivity in our economy billions, It undermines self conference and
impacts mental health and their job opportunities. So starting this September, in addition
to a new curriculum, I'm announcing that every student in their second year of
kindergarten, in grade one and in grade two will be screened to ensure their
meeting their provincial standard. This is critical to establish some measurement tool so that
we can intervene with additional supports in the schools and classrooms and to those kids
that will need it most. On Arrel's plan to boost literacy includes over one
hundred million dollars, and that includes new supports, including nearly seven hundred additional
frontline reading specialist educators. They'll be deployed to help those children to get them
on track. This will ensure all young learners receive the necessary foundational skills and
the early interventions they're going to be critical for their lifelong success. This represents
the largest investment in math and literacy in the country. It is by far
the most comprehensive literacy promotion strategy in the nation, and we're doing this because
we recognize the challenge ahead. Now we're also extending on Terrell's free tutoring program
to the end of the school year, again with the focus on boosting those
fundamental skills in reading, writing, a math, and other STEM disciplines.
This plan will up our game and it sends a clear signal to the entire
province that we have to do better to boost the skills that actually matter to
the success of your child. So yes, back to basics, back to
learning what matters most, so that your children can graduate they could own a
home and get a good paying job. So thank you for joining us,
and I'm now please to welcome Kevin Maynard, the vice president of the Kadian
Foundation for Economic Education, to the podium. Thank you, Minister, let
students, other invited guests, thank you for inviting me to this great event.
We know that learning happens throughout our lives, and that learning occurs at
libraries such as this, at home with the support and guidance of parents and
other caregivers, and in schools with teachers equipped with the skills and resources that
are required in today's ever changing world. We know that education is in the
business of preparing our youth to build successful futures, and we all have a
role to play. A key challenge is the rapidly changing world of work.
As jobs disappear, jobs are created, and jobs change, and the label
markets adjust to these new realities. Employers are looking for new skills, different
types of knowledge, and their needs and interests will continue to change in the
future. It is essential that we equip our youth with the fundamental skills that
will able them to adapt and respond to these changes, and to sustain success
and respond to opportunities in our evolving world. This initiative by the Minister of
Education and Math Resources and Professional Development Support makes a tremendous contribution to the potential
for improving the readiness of Ontario students for the future. After all, we
are all after the same goal, improving the potential of our youth through investments
that will lead to building financial capability and ensuring that our full potential can be
reached as individuals and in our community, throughout the province and beyond. Thank
you again, and now I'd like to invite Alicias Smith, Executive director of
Dyslexio Canada, to come up thank you. Every year, for the past
twenty years, we've had at least a third of students leave high school in
Ontario without having reached the level of literacy that they need to fully participate in
the modern economy. That's one out of every three students who are being shut
out of life's opportunities due to low literacy. Low literacy puts these young people
at an increased risk for many negative long term outcomes, including under an unemployment,
poverty, homelessness, and issues with mental health and addiction. And we
know from decades of data that racialized and indigenous students, students from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds, and students with disabilities like dyslexia are disproportionately impacted. But it doesn't
have to be this way. Research conducted in Canada and internationally, along with
real results from room teachers right here in Ontario, clearly show us that if
we change our approach, we can improve our outcomes. When schools align instruction
with reading science, implement universal screening using evidence based tools to identify students who
are at risk of dyslexia and other causes of reading difficulties, and provide targeted
early intervention starting in kindergarten, reading difficulties can be prevented for over ninety five
percent of all children. We have had the information and the tools necessary to
improve outcomes for over twenty years. The Ontario Human Rights Commission Right to Read
Inquiry was launched to discover why it is that the Ontario education system had yet
to adopt current evidence based practices. The HRC has provided a comprehensive set of
recommendations for system change at all levels and education, including at the Ministry,
school boards, schools, and in our faculties of education. Dyslexia Canada is
encouraged that the Government of Ontario has committed to implementing the OHRC's recommendations. We
see today's funding announcement as a positive and necessary step that will help Ontario school
boards shift their approach to early literacy to align with evidence based practices. I
know many Ontario school boards and teachers who have made significant progress over the past
several years in updating their practices. It is so exciting to see the data
that is coming out of these schools and classrooms and to hear about the positive
impact that these changes are having on children, not only on their reading ability,
but also in their confidence, self esteem, the behavior, and their
enthusiasm for reading and learning. But there's a lot of work to do to
ensure that every child in every school board is provided with the instruction and the
support that they need to get off to a good start with reading. With
today's announcement, we are one step closer to that goal. I'd like to
thank Minister Leche and his team for engaging with us in productive discussions over the
past year. Dyslexia Canada remains committed to working collaboratively with all parties and all
stakeholders in education. As we work towards fully implementing the right to read recommendations.
Thank you, and I'd like to invite Minister Leche to answer questions.
Thank you. We will now open the floor for questions. Please step forward
to the mic and state your name and outlet. Just a reminder, it's
one question and one follow up perscussion. Minister Leach, you spoke about hiring
around a thousand and staff towards this new program. There are four thousand,
eight hundred schools in the province. Any hiring that was done during the pandemic,
school boards have said was done through pandemic funding. Most likely those seven
thousand jobs. Many of those people will be laid off. So with only
a thousand people being offered up, which is less than twenty percent of schools
across the province, how much of an impact do you really think that new
staff will make? Well? The problems will be providing the fulsome education funding
details for school boards very shortly where that answer it could be provided for today.
What I can commit to is providing more capacity and staffing that was there
in years past. I mean the literacy program. This one hundred and nine
million dollars is entirely new. We never had a program dedicated specifically lifting standards
in literacy right across Ontario through new curriculum, through new staffing, and frankly
more resources in the classroom on mathematics. You know, last year we were
investing about fifty five million dollars. This year, according to the plan,
it's over seventy million. We're going to sustain the staff and hire additional ones
because we recognize we've got a zero in on those classrooms that are underperforming.
The goal with respect to math is to really focus on that lower twenty percent
of schools that quintal of schools that are really underperforming, use those supports,
those additional staff to get into those classrooms and lift standards. So the message
we're sending really is we're going to help every child get ahead by focusing in
on new supports, resources and people to improve literacy and mathematics. But we're
also going to really focus in on the lowest performing schools to lift them up
too, so that every child's able to succeed in the economy. So you
just mentioned sustaining the staff that have already been hired during the pandemic, a
commitment we haven't really heard before. You mentioned the budgets are coming up and
that you will make those commitments soon. The budget, of course do in
June. There's only less than two and a half months to go. Why
wait so long to release those details to school boards. Well, the funding
for school boards usually comes out in the early to mid spring, sometimes late
winter, so this is not abnormal. And what I can confirm to you
as the rebudget confirmed is that the funding for next school year is going to
be up by over one billion dollars one point three billion in baseline funding increase
for school boards. We're going to be really focusing in on strengthening reading,
writing, and math skills. We're going to improve supports for mental health and
special education. So I think families could be assured that this plan today to
really go back to the basics on emphasizing and improving literacy and mathematical competencies is
going to go a long way, especially after the pandemic, and of course
in very short order we'll be able to provide the broader investment for school boards
and be assured that we're going to be there for kids. We're going to
ensure we invest in them through the resources and staffing because we all want them
to succeed. We've seen the decline in reading, writing, mass 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. 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. Thank you, thank you. Regarding the new literacy screening for
younger students, what kind of programming and funding and resources will be put towards
the kids who are falling behind? And are you going to track them as
they go through the school system, So thank you for that. So we
are going to be providing school boards with the full funding to procure the tool,
as well as the funding required for the licensing. So we're going to
be covering all the costs associated with that tool and that technology, standardizing the
training across Ontario to make sure the teachers are comfortable with this screening tool.
It's going to help over on hundred thousand kids every year get a basic screening
assessment up to two times per year and that's going to be important. It's
also going to be accessible and available on the report cards for parents to see,
to create that transparency that young people that parents rather know about their youngest
learners, how they're doing and how frankly they're improving. And then with respect
to the investments associated for those kids and may need some intervention. Let's say
that your child is falling behind or below the standard we're now putting in place,
the hiring and the funding of nearly seven hundred teachers who are specialized in
literacy promotion to work specifically with those kids to lift up the standards and frankly,
just to help them get a bit more support so they can get back
on track. I also wanted to ask you about the Halton Public Board.
More than a month ago, they said they were going to put a professionalism
policy in place and hire a special advisor, neither of which have happened.
How do you feel about the way the board is continuing to handle this issue.
Well, they made commitments to parents in their community and we expect them
to fall through on them. Just before I ask my questions, does anybody
speak French here? No? Okay, I always have to ask, so
my first questions about the fact that in the twenty twenty three budget thirty seven
million dollars had already been been announced for literacy and maths. So is the
money announced today new money or is it on top? Yeah, so we're
announcing over one hundred and nine million dollars specifically just for literacy. So those
additional supports we're announcing today, um, and frankly, I think they're very
needed, as we heard from Alicia and others. I mean, if we
can really invest in a plan that helps every child improve their literacy and their
math skills, if we can give confidence to parents that we're going to increase
the supports and resources for them, I think we're going to help ensure the
kids can confidently graduate and ultimately get a good job. So this is additional
money, this would be well, yes, I mean there's additional funding we're
unveiling today that it was not covered in the budget. The budget speaks to,
for example, the fact that we're increasing investments in financial literacy. The
budget commits to an increase of investment overall to the Ministry of Education for our
schools at one point three billion DOAR baseline funding increase, so that's going to
help a lot. But today we're going much further through a comprehensive plan that
brings it all together that's really premised on lifting standards, increasing resources, increasing
the specialized frontline teachers that can work directly with children directly in classrooms and frankly
help get these kids on track. We know parents, We've heard them loud
and clear, particularly parents of young children, that fear that if we don't
act now in kindergarten, in grade one or two, in those early formative
years, that their kids could have lifelong impacts and roadblocks to success. So
we hear them, and we're investing in them with a plan to get them
on track. And how the money going to be divided among regions and schools
because there must be regions in schools that are that need that money more than
other. Yeah, so it's going to be I mean, some of the
funding is based on enrollment of children and some of it will be triage to
help kids in schools that have historically been low performing. That twenty percent of
schools that have historically been underperforming in Ontario with respect to math. That's where
a lot of the resources will go. But frankly, every school, I
mean, rather all school boards will benefit from the investment, and I think
it's critical, especially as we see and we hear from job creators and employers
who are saying to us, look, we've got to make sure that young
people when they graduate, they've mastered the skills that matter most. That's why
today's plan to bolster literacy and mathematical skills. I think it's going to have
a massive impact in the life and success of a child. Thank you well,
Minister Andrew Brannan from CTV. I just wanted to talk actually a little
bit about that, the triaging and how that process will work. So if
it's twenty percent that are being identified, first of all, will they be
getting twenty percent of each of the budget line funding or how will that work
and how will it be allocated? Yeah, so it's an important question.
So for each grade priority schools include the lowest achieving twenty percent of schools,
So we're going to really emphasize and focus it on those according to Equo data,
and really ensure that they get the resources necessary. It'll be based on
the needs of kids in all schools. But the fact is we have a
plan today to improve literacy and math across the board. But when it comes
to mathematics, you know, we understand that financial literacy is fundamental to the
success of a young person, not just in their own life, in their
own household budgets, but also when respect to getting a job. So we
are going to make sure we lift standards with accountability in place. The first
approach is yes triaging and focusing on lifting up the standards of the lowest performing
schools and boards. The second is to provide a new curriculum with more math
coaches. We're doubling them to provide support in schools. And finally, we
have a Math Action Team, which is essentially a team of highly trained,
highly skilled math educators who we've secconded. We've brought them into the ministry that
we can now deploy into the classrooms or schools or boards that actually need to
do better. And so we're using a multitude of actions, more staffing,
an action team, accountability. We're frankly sending a clear signal to parents and
to the education sector that we've got to work harder and smarter and produce better
results for children. And I think this math support is going to really help
get kids on track after years of difficulty in the pandemic of course, only
set them for their back. So this is a realization, a recognition of
a problem and a plan to help them succeed and just okay, so we
learned something, and we also learned that hey, you know what, not
all brains are wired the same, and it means that we have to have
some flexibility in our education system. We still need those basic skills, the
reading, the writing, and those basic arithmetic and mass skills, but how
do we support those who have brains that are wired slightly differently? As we
heard from Alice Smith, the executive director for Dyslexia Canada. And there are
other things out there are people out there who have different things other than dyslexia,
autism being one, and there's many, many more of ways of how
the human brain can be wired and that we're not all all wired the same,
but we all can achieve greatness. And by learning about how the human
brain is actually wired in the samenesses and the differences, that we can learn
how to improve our education system so our children can achieve way more than what
we have ourselves. So thank you for listening to us. Her own policy
and rights here Depictions Media Radio. I've been your host, Michael Cloggs.
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