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Ontario education minister aiming for uniformity and safety in schools but parents group insists crisis is in chronic underfunding
Ontario education minister Paul Calandra says the return of paper report cards is one of the priorities for Ontario schools.
He made the remark during a wide-ranging conversation with parents and teachers in London, Ontario last week.
“We are going to bring back a report in paper form, as well as online, because too many people don’t know how to download a report card,” he said, adding that parents have told him they find it daunting to have to insert several passwords in multiple online platforms.
It was just one of many issues canvassed, including phones in classrooms, school uniforms and respect for teachers.
At the top of Calandra’s list seems to be remedying what he perceives as learning differences across the province.
“It’s no secret,” he said, “that we are looking at how we govern the system, no secret we are looking at fundamental governance reform … removing the discrepancies that exist from board to board to board.”
Calandra suggested the province has “72 different systems of education in this province, 72 different curriculums. Teachers are teaching different things.”
He promised that the ministry “will be much more active – much more prescriptive. We will provide better curriculum, we will enforce that curriculum, with the results we are expecting.”
This week, I had the opportunity to tour the new White Pine Public School in London, Ontario. This state-of-the-art, modernized school is a great example of how we’re building the spaces students need to learn, grow, and thrive.Thank you to everyone who welcomed us and for the… pic.twitter.com/RuNT6szJWN
— Paul Calandra (@PaulCalandra) February 27, 2026
Calandra noted literacy scores in the province are good, but math scores are weak, the latter being something he’d like to see change.
Elizabeth Garkowski and Julia Evangelisto are co-founders of Ontario Parents for Education Support . Both are parents of children with disabilities. The organization formed in mid-2024 when support for children like theirs declined in a local school. It provides support, resources, and engages in advocacy.
They say the system is already focusing on literacy and math, and insist the real underlying issue is increasing class sizes and reduced educational support staff. In an email to National Post on Wednesday, Garkowski and Evangelisto said teacher and parents “have been raising concerns about staffing levels and classroom complexity for years. (I)t should not be surprising that student outcomes are affected.
“Teachers are burning out at alarming rates due to the environments they are being asked to work in.”
Another ongoing concern that Calandra acknowledged is school safety. He mentioned police in schools, student cellphones and how responsibility for safety is laid on teachers left to make tough calls. He says he’s looking at measures that will change this, but did not elaborate.
The Ontario Parents for Education Support organization argues the classroom crisis also plays into school safety. “When the ratio of responsible adults in a building decreases, particularly trained support staff, students may not receive timely interventions. That can contribute to escalation and, in some cases, unsafe environments.”
They urge against police in schools. “It should not be considered the answer to this problem. Research on policing in schools has shown that it has a disproportionate impact on marginalized students. If improving safety is the goal, increasing in-school support such as educational assistants, child and youth workers, and mental health professionals may be a more direct and preventative approach.”
Unfortunately, they contend, the funding crisis leads to a circular argument: “What we find frustrating is when structural underfunding contributes to measurable challenges, those challenges are presented as proof that the education system is inherently broken.”
They say, as a case in point, that the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association says there is an estimated annual gap of approximately $580 million between provincial special education funding and what boards are actually spending in order to meet student needs.
“When concerns such as declining test scores or increased incidents of violence arise, we feel that these are symptoms of these broader structural challenges.”
Finally, they don’t see paper report cards as a pressing priority. They point out that “printing report cards across the province carries a significant cost.” The original shift toward digital report cards, they note, was driven by financial pressures.
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