In December, Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office released its latest student-testing results, and delivered a sobering message: Only about half of the province’s Grade 6 students met the provincial standard in mathematics, and Grade 3 performance sits at just 64 per cent, inching up only slightly over three years.
These numbers are not just statistics. They represent children – real students – moving through school with shaky foundations in the very subject that underpins science, technology, skilled trades, financial literacy and problem-solving.
Put differently, of the nearly 134,000 Grade 6 students who participated, only about 65,000 met provincial benchmarks. Of those, roughly 11,000 reached the highest level of proficiency. In a province that prides itself on innovation and global competitiveness, that is a troublingly small fraction.
Now imagine two Grade 6 classes heading out for recess. Of the 60 students playing outside, statistically about 30 are struggling to meet math expectations. Only a handful are achieving at the highest level. We would never accept this kind of performance in health care, engineering or aviation. Yet in classrooms, we have normalized it.
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