Ontario Continues Supporting Students

October 20, 2022

The Government of Ontario launched a comprehensive suite of initiatives supported by a historic overall investment of $26.6 billion for the 2022-23 school year — which includes a 2.7 per cent increase in the annual Grants for Student Needs from the previous year.

Plan to Catch Up and Learning Recovery

Ontario’s Plan to Catch Up is helping students recover from the disruptions caused by the pandemic. Highlights from these supports included:

$175 million in board-led tutoring supports
$11 million to support implementation of de-streaming all Grade 9 subjects
$15 million in summer learning programs focused around literacy and math
$25 million in reading intervention programs and professional assessments to support struggling readers
$90 million in mental health supports, including $10 million in new mental health funding — an increase of 420 per cent since 2017-18
$304 million in time-limited additional staffing supports for the hiring of an estimated 3,000 frontline staff, including teachers, early childhood educators, educational assistants and other education workers to address learning recovery and other key priorities.

Students are already benefiting from the progress being made through the Plan to Catch Up, which included:

Getting kids back in class in September for the entire school year with a full school experience that includes extra curriculars like clubs, band and field trips
Expanding tutoring supports to fill gaps in learning
Preparing students for the jobs of tomorrow, including a focus on the skilled trades
Supporting students with good schools and high-quality educators
Helping students with historic funding for mental health supports.

Four-Year Math Strategy

With the new Math Recovery Plan, the government is building on its current four-year math strategy which was implemented before the pandemic to get back to basics and make sure students and educators have the math skills and resources to succeed in the classroom and beyond.

From 2019-20 to 2022-23, the government’s four-year $200 million math strategy delivered:

More school-based math coaches
New digital math tools in classrooms and more one-on-one virtual tutoring
New elementary math curriculum
New de-streamed Grade 9 math course.

Supports for the 2022-23 School Year

To ensure students have access to immediate supports, the ministry is continuing investments of over $50 million this year to improve student math performance:

Math Leads in Every Board and School-based Math Coaches ($25 million): Every school board has a board math lead to focus improvement efforts, as well as over 140 school-based math coaches in over 700 targeted schools to provide training directly to teachers in classrooms.
Teachers with Additional Qualification in Math ($4 million): Teachers have access to additional training in math, such as subsidies to complete additional qualifications in math. To date, over 5,000 teachers have completed additional qualifications in math through these investments and up to an additional 4,000 will be taking these qualifications this year.
New Math Curriculum: With the return to normalcy, students will benefit from the new modernized math curriculum for Grades 1 to 9, that focuses on fundamental math skills, practical examples, and new mandatory learning on coding, data literacy and financial literacy.
Digital Math Tools ($15 million): Funding will be made available to school boards to offer a digital tool aligned with the Ontario curriculum to support students, parents and educators.
One-on-One Virtual Tutoring ($6 million): Students can also access online tutoring programs to receive one-on-one support from certified teachers through Mathify and Eureka! This year we have expanded access to Mathify, now available to students in grades 4 to 12 (previously 6 to 10) with extended weekend hours.

The ministry will also work directly with school boards through Math Action Teams, including board and school-based math coaches and consider options to strengthen Policy/Program Memorandum 160: Protected Time for Daily Mathematics Instruction, Grades 1 to 8, to promote the use of high-impact math teaching strategies in Ontario classrooms.