Watchdog urges Ontario to ensure 'fair, equitable' education for all students
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A public education watchdog warns rural schools are getting short shrift in government money and wants the funding formula scrapped to make a “fair and equitable” education system for all Ontario students.
People for Education is calling on the province to put policies in place to ensure all Ontario students have access to programming “regardless of the size of their schools or their location.”
In its annual school survey released today, the watchdog says urban students are more likely to have music and physical education teachers, access to psychologists and special education.
Geography, the report said, is challenging the access to equitable education, leaving young people living in rural areas and northern Ontario with fewer choices and resources.
The report examined differences between programs in small town/rural schools and urban/suburban schools. The province’s funding formula is based on enrolment numbers and the study examined whether small towns “may be at a disadvantage” because their schools are smaller.
“It tells me that we need to make a greater investment in education in rural and northern Ontario,” said Doug Reycraft, the ex-MPP and former Southwest Middlesex mayor who chairs the Community Schools Alliance.
Reycraft, who’s also a member of the Premier’s Community Hub Framework Advisory Group, spoke at the group’s news conference in Toronto Thursday. He has been a strong proponent of saving Glencoe District secondary school, a small rural school that’s been on the verge of closing for years.
Next month, he said, the community and other small towns like Parkhill will get a better idea of what the plan is for their schools. They’ll meet with Thames Valley district school board and municipal representatives involved with the Education Ministry’s new community planning and partnership policy.
The policy encourages communities and school boards to work together and “optimize the use of public assets owned by school boards.”
Reycraft said the study’s findings show the “unintended consequence” of an education funding formula that calculates funding on a per-student basis and directs more money to more populated areas.
The results are that small schools and schools in smaller communities are closing and student populations are being consolidated in larger centres’ schools.
The loss of small-town schools will radically change the towns and villages where people live. For students, it means long bus rides, lost connections to small communities and an inability to participate in extra-curricular activities.
“If we’re going to force all our adolescents to go to cities to get their secondary education, never mind their post-secondary, what we’re going to see is families that are going to relocate to the cities or locate there in the first place,” Reycraft said.
“People aren’t going to want to go to rural areas to start and raise their families. . . . The province needs rural Ontario to feed it and provide this alternate option for a place to raise families in a safer environment than a large urban environment.”
The urban-rural divide
A study by the public education watchdog, People for Education, found that urban schools have more educational resources than rural schools. Some of the findings include:
61 per cent of urban/suburban elementary schools have a health and physical education teacher, compared to 30 per cent of small town/rural schools.
52 per cent of urban/suburban schools have a music teacher, compared to 30 per cent of small town/rural schools.
60 per cent of urban/suburban elementary schools have a teacher-librarian, compared to 44 per cent of small town/rural schools.
94 per cent of urban/suburban schools have a full-time guidance counsellor, compared to 74 per cent of small town/rural schools.
62 per cent of urban/suburban elementary schools have regular access to social workers, compared to 30 per cent of small town/rural schools.
More rural kids can’t get on waiting lists for assessments and only 66 per cent of rural schools have a full-time special education teacher, compared to 91 per cent of urban/suburban elementary schools.