Social Policy in Ontario

News that Ontario’s education minister is considering ending the province’s practice of streaming Grade 9 students into either university-geared “academic” courses or more hands-on “applied” ones is cause for hope.

For nearly a quarter century, this policy has done nothing to advance the academic prospects of Ontario students while doing a great deal to reinforce the educational disadvantages experienced by low-income and Black kids. It’s high time to end it.

At the age of 13 or 14, often under pressure from teachers and with little understanding of the implications for their future, students are asked to make a decision of consequence frequently little understood. As a new study from Social Planning Toronto concludes that, “Without the maturity and support to fully grasp the weight of these decisions, some students are unknowingly following a path which inhibits them from reaching their full potential.”

On Thursday, Education Minister Mitzie Hunter acknowledged another dimension of the problem: a disproportionate number of the students unwittingly choosing to limit their academic prospects by going into the applied stream are “from racialized backgrounds and … low-income students.” This, she rightly said, is “unacceptable.”

We have long known this. As the advocacy group People for Education reported back in 2015, studies consistently demonstrate that streaming perpetuates income-based disparities in educational outcomes.

That group, which again called for an end to streaming this week, cited a Toronto District School Board study that found that only 6 per cent of students from the highest income neighbourhoods take a majority of their courses in the applied stream, compared to 33 per cent of students from the lowest income neighbourhoods.

Moreover, as a 2013 OECD study found, streaming actually produces worse outcomes for lower-income students, especially when they are divided from their peers early in secondary school. That study recommended an end to the practice.

The policy has also been shown to both reflect and reinforce racial inequalities. For instance, a disturbing York University study released this spring found that only 53 per cent of black student are enrolled in the academic courses, compared to 81 per cent of white students and 80 per cent of students of other races.