Archive for the ‘Education Debates’ Category
To improve literacy, Ontario should invest in students and educators
Friday, May 1st, 2026
Even when screening tools are efficient and well-designed, teachers often lack the time, class-size conditions and specialist support needed to respond meaningfully to the results… Ontario stands at a familiar crossroads: keep reaching for solutions that are quick to purchase and easy to measure, or do the harder work of building lasting public capacity… [through] smaller primary classes, restored specialist support, rich early language environments and teacher education grounded in deep literacy expertise.
Tags: budget, Education, ideology, participation, standard of living, youth
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New funding announcement brings some relief to universities, but still leaves Ontario at the bottom of the heap and increases student debt.
Thursday, March 26th, 2026
Ontario’s funding is entrenched in last place, so far behind that it would take more than a 45% increase to match the second-lowest funded province, Alberta. Increasing total university funding by of 13.5% per year for five years would bring per capita funding in Ontario to the national average… The data shows that there is record demand from Ontario secondary school students for an Ontario university education.
Tags: budget, Education, jurisdiction, participation, youth
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Ontario got two things right with post-secondary funding — and one thing very wrong
Saturday, February 21st, 2026
Increasing tuition and provincial funding will improve the financial conditions facing colleges and universities. However, shifting OSAP from majority grants to loans will make it harder for students, particularly those most economically disadvantaged, to attend, persist, and graduate. There are other, more equitable pathways forward.
Tags: budget, Education, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
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Getting rid of school board trustees is the right thing to do
Saturday, February 21st, 2026
Calandra’s stated goal is to restore solvency and stability — fiscal and pedagogical — to the system. The minister has catalogued a litany of unauthorized budget deficits, implausible fiscal plans, botched agendas for staff and students, and classroom funding sacrificed for pet projects or fanciful causes. Opposition critics suggest Calandra has a hidden agenda to disempower trustees.
Tags: Education, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
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Federal budget creates a massive educational opportunity for Doug Ford
Tuesday, November 18th, 2025
Ontario’s universities have the lowest per-student funding of any province in Canada… crumbling infrastructure and outdated instrumentation… reductions in support staff, early retirement incentives, and hiring freezes for new faculty. Such actions have resulted in Ontario having the worst student-teacher ratio of any province in the country. Moreover, larger class sizes, fewer teaching assistants, and stripped-down learning opportunities have quickly become the norm on many university campuses.
Tags: budget, Education, featured, jurisdiction, standard of living, youth
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It’s not just penny-pinching premiers that teachers are up against
Friday, October 31st, 2025
When teachers call for reduced class sizes, more support and better teaching conditions — better learning conditions — they’re not being self-serving. They’re thinking about every kid in every classroom. They’re thinking about the collective future we want those kids to create. Too bad the politics of narrow ignorance keeps getting in the way.
Tags: budget, Education, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
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To close its productivity gap, Canada needs to rethink its higher education system
Monday, September 15th, 2025
… the future demands a paradigm shift in how Canada develops its human capital… learning pathways are limitless and today, only a fraction of learning occurs in classrooms; the vast majority takes place in workplaces, community organizations, libraries, places of worship, on sports fields and stages, and through podcasts, blogs and books. Accelerating this paradigm shift offers Canada a unique opportunity to improve its productivity by unlocking the value of existing learning assets.
Tags: economy, Education, globalization, ideology
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School lunches, the French way: It’s not just about nutrition, but togetherness and bon appetit
Tuesday, July 15th, 2025
… we need to shift from thinking of school lunches as a safety net for kids living in poverty to thinking about them as benefiting the health and well-being of children and their families… the cultural diversity of Canadian school communities is reflected in the food on offer… centralized kitchens can prepare thousands of servings of a main dish daily… to prepare food for daycares and for seniors who were home-bound — something to consider for Canadian cities…
Tags: Education, ideology, multiculturalism, participation, standard of living, youth
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Rebuilding Canadian post-secondary education
Thursday, July 10th, 2025
Canada has a chance to lead the world in higher education, if it can fix its own long-neglected system first… Taking advantage of the brain-drain from the US, we could recruit the best and brightest to fill our labs, faculty lounges, and classrooms. By leading the world in research, we could build back up some credibility and soft power on the world stage that we have lost in recent decades. However, this would require new public investments in education.
Tags: budget, Education, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction
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Focus on Funding
Monday, June 30th, 2025
Ontario universities receive the lowest funding per domestic full time equivalent student (FTE) by far… Had Ontario funded its universities at the national funding average over the five years between 2018-19 and 2022-23, it would have provided its universities with an additional $11.9 billion in total university funding. Recent funding announcements… do not come close to addressing this funding gap. Ontario deserves better.
Tags: budget, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
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