Yes, Young Pupils Can Be Suspended: Most School Boards Do Not Seem to Know

If your child was hurt at school and you were told the other child is too young to suspend, you were told half the rule.

The bottom line

Yes. A pupil in junior kindergarten to Grade 3 can be suspended in Ontario. In some cases the principal must suspend. Most school boards have not written that into their bullying documents.

1. Ontario ended discretionary suspensions for junior kindergarten to Grade 3 in 2020. It kept mandatory suspensions for serious incidents.
2. For bullying, the Ministry of Education’s memorandum says principals “must suspend” a junior kindergarten to Grade 3 pupil in two cases, after an investigation. No earlier suspension is needed.
3. Two of Ontario’s 72 school boards carry that rule in full in their bullying documents. Seventy do not. Three state that these pupils cannot be suspended.
4. The rule itself has gaps. It depends on an investigation for which the regulation and the memorandum set no deadline, on the words “unacceptable risk”, which the Act, the regulations and the memorandum do not define, and on one person’s judgment of a “power imbalance”. Most of these gaps can be closed without amending the Act.

1. “We cannot suspend a child that young”

You may have heard some version of this sentence. Your child comes home hurt. It happens again. You ask what the school is going to do, and the answer is that the other child is in kindergarten, or Grade 1, or Grade 2, and the law does not allow a suspension.

The sentence has a source. In 2020 Ontario made a regulation about suspending pupils in the primary grades. The Ministry of Education’s own page for parents says that if such a pupil “has engaged in any of the activities listed above”, meaning the discretionary list, “the principal will not consider suspension” (Ontario 2026).

That is half the rule. The rule does not stop there.

2. What the rule says

The Education Act has two suspension sections. Under section 306, a principal “shall consider whether to suspend” a pupil for a listed set of activities, which includes uttering a threat to inflict serious bodily harm, swearing at a teacher, and bullying. This is the discretionary route. Under section 310, a principal “shall suspend” a pupil for a second list, which includes possessing a weapon, physical assault causing bodily harm requiring treatment by a medical practitioner, sexual assault, and certain bullying. This is the mandatory route, and it leads to an investigation and a possible expulsion (Education Act, ss. 306(1), 310(1)).

Ontario Regulation 440/20, Suspension of Elementary School Pupils, changes both routes for the youngest pupils. Its operative text is three subsections (O. Reg. 440/20, s. 1):

“(1) A pupil in junior kindergarten, kindergarten or grade 1, 2 or 3 shall not be suspended under section 306 of the Act for engaging in an activity described in subsection 306 (1) of the Act.”

“(2) A pupil in junior kindergarten, kindergarten or grade 1, 2 or 3 shall not be suspended under section 310 of the Act for engaging in an activity described in subsection 310 (1) of the Act unless the principal has conducted an investigation respecting the allegations.”

“(3) The condition set out in subparagraph 7.1 i of subsection 310 (1) of the Act does not apply in respect of a suspension under section 310 of the Act of a pupil in junior kindergarten, kindergarten or grade 1, 2 or 3.”

Subsection (1) removes the discretionary route. Subsection (2) keeps the mandatory route and puts the investigation first. Subsection (3) concerns bullying. For older pupils, paragraph 7.1 makes bullying a mandatory suspension where “the pupil has previously been suspended for engaging in bullying” and “the pupil’s continuing presence in the school creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person” (Education Act, s. 310(1), para. 7.1). Bullying motivated by bias, prejudice or hate is a separate mandatory case under paragraph 7.2, in every grade. For a pupil in junior kindergarten to Grade 3, the regulation removes the first of the two paragraph 7.1 conditions. The second is enough.

The government said so when it announced the change: “Serious offences will still be subject to mandatory suspensions” (Ontario 2020).

Policy/Program Memorandum 144, the Ministry’s direction to school boards on bullying, states the result directly (Ministry of Education 2021, component 8):

“Principals must suspend students in junior kindergarten to grade 3 for incidents of bullying if:

• their continuing presence in the school creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person
• the bullying is motivated by bias, prejudice, or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or any other similar factor (for example, socio- economic status, appearance)”

“The principal may only suspend a student in junior kindergarten to grade 3 under section 310 of the Education Act for engaging in bullying if they have conducted an investigation respecting the allegations.”

The same memorandum says that other incidents of bullying involving these pupils “should be addressed with the appropriate positive behaviour supports in the school setting”. So the rule has two parts. Supports are the ordinary response. Suspension is required in two defined cases, after an investigation.

3. What parents are told, and what is true

“Students in junior kindergarten to Grade 3 cannot be suspended.” This is the most common form. It is true of section 306 and untrue of section 310. It usually arrives as a statement that is accurate as far as it goes: under the Education Act, pupils in junior kindergarten to Grade 3 are not subject to suspension for section 306 activities. Section 310 goes unmentioned. A parent who does not know there are two sections could take from it that suspension is not available. Three boards go further and state in their bullying documents that these pupils cannot be suspended.

“Bullying by a young child is never a matter for suspension.” The memorandum says the opposite in two cases. Where the pupil’s “continuing presence in the school creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person”, or where the bullying is “motivated by bias, prejudice, or hate”, the principal “must suspend” (Ministry of Education 2021, component 8). The word is must, not may.

“The child has to have been suspended for bullying before.” That condition is in the Education Act and applies in Grades 4 to 12. The regulation removes it for junior kindergarten to Grade 3. The Ministry’s own guidance for parents does not make the distinction easy to see. Its page on suspensions and expulsions says that for a junior kindergarten to Grade 3 pupil “the principal will investigate the allegations to determine if the student should be suspended or expelled”, and then, under the heading “Activities that can lead to expulsion”, gives one list for all grades. That list includes bullying “if the student was suspended before for bullying and the student’s presence in the school creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person” (Ontario 2026). The page does not say that the first half of that condition does not apply to the youngest pupils.

“If we cannot suspend, there is nothing else we have to do.” The regulation deals with suspension only. The other duties in Part XIII of the Education Act have no grade limit. A board employee who becomes aware that a pupil may have engaged in a section 306 or section 310 activity “shall report to the principal”, and the principal “shall investigate any matter reported” (Education Act, s. 300.2(1), (3)). Where the principal believes a pupil has been harmed as a result of a section 306 or section 310 activity, the principal “shall, as soon as reasonably possible, notify” that pupil’s parent or guardian, subject to limited exceptions, and “shall disclose”, among other things, “the steps taken to protect the pupil’s safety” and “the supports that will be provided for the pupil” (Education Act, s. 300.3(1), (4)). A kindergarten incident is reported, investigated and communicated to parents in the same way as any other.

4. Most boards have not written it down

Policy/Program Memorandum 144 says boards “should ensure alignment of policies related to suspensions and expulsions with Ontario Regulation 440/20” (Ministry of Education 2021, component 8). School Board Research read each board’s Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan and its bullying prevention and intervention policy for three things, taken from the memorandum’s wording:

1. that a principal must suspend a junior kindergarten to Grade 3 pupil for bullying where their continuing presence in the school creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person, with no further condition;
2. that a principal must suspend where the bullying is motivated by bias, prejudice, or hate, as a case of its own;
3. that the suspension may follow only after the principal has conducted an investigation respecting the allegations.

Two boards carried all three. Seventy did not. Table 1 sets out what the 70 said instead.

What the board’s documents say	Boards
Nothing on when a principal must suspend a junior kindergarten to Grade 3 pupil for bullying: silent, a reference to the Act or regulation only, a general duty to comply, or left to another document	39
Neither a Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan nor a bullying prevention and intervention policy could be credited on the board’s website: the board’s bullying rules are in an administrative procedure or directive, or the only document reached carries none of them	25
A statement that junior kindergarten to Grade 3 pupils cannot be suspended	3
The condition that the pupil was suspended before is attached to the unacceptable-risk case for these pupils	2
A recital that these pupils cannot be suspended under section 306, with no case in which the principal must suspend	1
Total	70

The two boards that carried the rule did so in the memorandum’s own wording. The requirement can be met in two paragraphs.

The fourth row matters as much as the first. At two boards the documents tell a principal that a young pupil must have been suspended for bullying before a mandatory suspension applies. On that wording, a first incident would not lead to a mandatory suspension even where the pupil’s continuing presence in the school creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person. The memorandum requires one.

5. Where the rules themselves fall short

A board that copied component 8 of the memorandum word for word would meet all three points in section 4. Its parents would still face six questions that the regulation and the memorandum do not answer.

Is the investigation mandatory, and how long can it take? It is mandatory once staff report. A board employee who becomes aware that a pupil may have engaged in a section 306 or section 310 activity “shall report to the principal”, and the principal “shall investigate any matter reported” (Education Act, s. 300.2(1), (3)). The duty is tied to a report by a board employee. A parent’s report reaches it through the employee who receives it, who must then report to the principal. For the youngest pupils an investigation is also the gate. In Grades 4 to 12 the principal “shall suspend” on belief, and the investigation the Act then requires is “to determine whether to recommend to the board that the pupil be expelled” (ss. 310(1), 311.1(1)). In junior kindergarten to Grade 3 an investigation must come first: no suspension “unless the principal has conducted an investigation respecting the allegations” (O. Reg. 440/20, s. 1(2)). Neither the regulation nor the memorandum sets a deadline for that investigation or says what it must record. The Act’s requirement that an investigation “shall begin promptly” applies to the investigation that follows a suspension (s. 311.1(2)). Nothing in the regulation or the memorandum removes the pupil from the classroom while the first investigation is pending. If it is not started, or not finished, the suspension the memorandum calls mandatory cannot happen.

How many injuries make an “unacceptable risk”? The whole trigger rests on these two words. The Education Act, O. Reg. 472/07 and the memorandum use them. None of them defines them, and neither does O. Reg. 440/20. There is no number. Nothing says whether one bite that breaks the skin is enough, or two, or whether a child must be pushed off the climber before the risk is unacceptable. The decision belongs to the principal, who must suspend “if he or she believes” the pupil has engaged in the activity (Education Act, s. 310(1)). The same words also appear in the regulation on mitigating factors, pointing the other way. It is one of the factors that “shall be taken into account” when a principal considers a discretionary suspension, the length of a suspension, or a recommendation to expel: “The pupil’s continuing presence in the school does not create an unacceptable risk to the safety of any person” (O. Reg. 472/07, s. 2). A parent has no written standard to hold the decision against.

Does it have to happen more than once? No, but the rules do not make that easy to see. The Act says bullying is “typically repeated”, not always repeated, and the memorandum says it “can be repeated or occur one time” (Education Act, s. 1(1); Ministry of Education 2021, “Understanding bullying and cyber-bullying”). So a single event can be bullying. What a single event leads to is a different matter. Take a threat. One child tells another, “I am going to break your arm.” “Uttering a threat to inflict serious bodily harm on another person” is the first item on the section 306 list, the discretionary list, and a pupil in junior kindergarten to Grade 3 cannot be suspended under section 306 (Education Act, s. 306(1); O. Reg. 440/20, s. 1(1)). After an investigation, the threat leads to a mandatory suspension only if it is “motivated by bias, prejudice or hate”, if a weapon is used to make it, if the board’s own policy says so, or if the principal believes it is bullying and that the pupil’s continuing presence in the school creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person. Take an injury: a kick that leaves a child winded and bruised but needs no medical treatment. The Act’s line for a mandatory suspension is “bodily harm requiring treatment by a medical practitioner” (s. 310(1), para. 3). The definition of bullying counts much more as harm: “physical, psychological, social or academic harm” (s. 1(1)). But outside bullying, for the youngest pupils, a physical assault that causes harm short of “bodily harm requiring treatment by a medical practitioner” has no suspension attached to it by the Act, unless a weapon is used, another item on the section 310 list applies, or the board’s own policy makes it a mandatory suspension. Subject to those exceptions, that is the amount of harm the rules presently leave without that consequence. The duties to report, to investigate and to notify parents still apply, at any age, to a threat and to any assault that is on either list.

What if several children are hurting one child? The trigger is written one pupil at a time. It asks whether “the pupil’s continuing presence in the school” creates the risk. Bullying by a group is within the definition: the Act names “peer group power” among the factors on which a power imbalance may be based (Education Act, s. 1(1)). But nothing says how a principal is to weigh the risk when it comes from several children acting together and no one of them, taken alone, looks dangerous. For the child on the receiving end the risk is the group.

What if the school says it is not “bullying”? Everything in the memorandum’s rule depends on that word. The Act’s definition requires, among other things, “a real or perceived power imbalance between the pupil and the individual”, and it does not say which child must hold the power (Education Act, s. 1(1)). A companion article sets out that gap. What matters here is what follows from it. If the principal concludes the behaviour is not bullying, the two bullying triggers do not apply. For a pupil in junior kindergarten to Grade 3, what is left is the rest of the section 310 list. Of the items that bear on a threat or an assault, it requires suspension for “Using a weapon to cause or to threaten bodily harm to another person”, for “physical assault on another person that causes bodily harm requiring treatment by a medical practitioner”, for any section 306 activity “motivated by bias, prejudice or hate”, and for anything the board’s own policy makes a mandatory suspension (s. 310(1), paras. 2, 3, 7.2, 8). A threat to inflict serious bodily harm is on the section 306 list, which is closed to these grades. So a child can bite, kick or threaten another, more than once, and if it is not bullying, no weapon is used, the harm does not require treatment by a medical practitioner, no bias, prejudice or hate is found, and the board’s policy is silent, the Act and the regulation attach no suspension to it. Where the behaviour is on either list, the duties to report, to investigate and to notify parents still apply, and the memorandum still calls for positive behaviour supports.

Is suspension the only way to remove a child? Not on paper. Outside the suspension rules, the Act makes it a principal’s duty, “subject to an appeal to the board, to refuse to admit to the school or classroom a person whose presence in the school or classroom would in the principal’s judgment be detrimental to the physical or mental well-being of the pupils” (Education Act, s. 265(1)(m)). The Ministry’s memorandum on progressive discipline calls this the “exclusion provision” and says: “Exclusion is not to be used as a form of discipline” (Ministry of Education 2018). Whether the clause reaches an enrolled pupil at all is disputed. One published legal analysis argues that it does not, on its own, give a principal the power to exclude a student (Reid 2017). So the one route that is not a suspension rests on the principal’s judgment, comes with a Ministry instruction not to use it as discipline, and carries a question over whether it applies to pupils at all. A parent who asks about it should expect to hear all three.

These are questions for the Ministry of Education and, in two cases, for Cabinet and the Legislature. A parent should not have to answer them alone in a principal’s office.

6. What this means in a classroom

This review reads documents. It does not observe what principals do. What follows is a reasoned concern, not a measured effect.

A principal who follows the board’s document may not act. A board’s plan and policy are what its principals are directed to follow. Where those documents are silent, or say that a young pupil cannot be suspended, a principal who relies on those documents finds no stated duty in them at the point where the memorandum says there is one. The pupil who is an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person stays in the classroom, and the school may believe that it has no other option.

The belief can displace the investigation. If a school starts from the position that suspension is not possible, there is less reason to investigate, to record the incident as a serious student incident, or to tell the harmed child’s parents what steps were taken. Those duties exist whether or not anyone is suspended.

The child who was hurt carries the cost. When the pupil who is causing the harm stays, the pupil who was harmed can be the one who changes: a different recess, a different seat, a different class, or days at home. A parent who is told the law prevents action has to read the Act, the regulation and the memorandum together to check. The board’s bullying documents will usually not help: 70 of 72 do not carry the rule in full. The Ministry’s parent page does not say that the earlier-suspension condition is removed for these pupils.

Violence is reported more often by staff who work with younger students. In a 2023 survey for the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, 77 per cent of members said they had “personally experienced violence or witnessed violence against another staff member”, and the federation reported: “Educators working with younger students are more likely to experience violence” (ETFO 2023). The survey concerns violence against staff. It does not address the suspension rule, does not define “younger students” by grade, and does not show that the rule or its misreading causes violence. It is noted here only because it suggests that serious incidents are not confined to the older grades.

The regulation ended discretionary suspensions in the primary grades, and the memorandum makes positive behaviour supports the ordinary response to other incidents of bullying. What remains is the mandatory list, which for bullying means two cases, one of them where another person is at unacceptable risk. Most boards have not written it into their bullying documents, and the regulation and the memorandum do not say how it is to be used.

7. What should change

Six changes would close most of the gaps described above. Five need no bill. These are School Board Research’s recommendations. They are not findings of the review, and they rest on the reading of the rules in section 5, not on evidence of how principals act. The gap in the definition of bullying is dealt with in a companion article.

For the Minister of Education, without a regulation or a bill:

1. Require every board to carry the junior kindergarten to Grade 3 rule, in the memorandum’s own words, in its Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan or policy, and ask each board to confirm within 30 days that it has done so.
2. Give guidance on what an “unacceptable risk to the safety of another person” is, with examples, including where the risk comes from several pupils acting together, so that principals and parents have a written standard. A memorandum cannot change the Act, but it can tell boards how to apply it.
3. Set a deadline for the investigation that must come before a suspension in these grades, and say what must be recorded and, within the limits of section 300.3 of the Act, what the parents of the child who was harmed must be told.
4. Correct the Ministry’s page for parents so that it states the rule for the youngest pupils in full.

For Cabinet, by regulation:

5. Amend subsection 1(1) of O. Reg. 440/20 so that a principal may again consider suspending a pupil in junior kindergarten to Grade 3 under section 306 in prescribed circumstances: for uttering a threat to inflict serious bodily harm on another person, for bullying, and for physical assault. The Act allows this. Cabinet may provide that such suspensions “may only occur in the prescribed circumstances” (Education Act, s. 316(1.1)(a)). The regulation was made by Cabinet and Cabinet can change it.

For the Legislature:

6. Lower the threshold for physical assault. Paragraph 3 of the mandatory list reaches a physical assault only where it “causes bodily harm requiring treatment by a medical practitioner” (s. 310(1), para. 3). Unless a weapon is used, another item on the lists applies or the board’s own policy covers it, a physical assault that causes less harm than that is on neither list. A child can be hit hard enough to come home bruised, again and again, without reaching that threshold. It is still assault. Physical assault that causes bodily harm should be on the discretionary list in section 306 whether or not it required treatment by a medical practitioner, with the mandatory list left as it is.

The fifth is the one people will disagree about. When the government proposed ending discretionary suspensions for these grades in 2020, it did so as one of a package of changes that it said “will help break down barriers for Black, Indigenous and racialized students and provide all students with an equal opportunity to succeed” (Ontario 2020). That aim is not in dispute here. The question is what the rule leaves a principal able to do when a child has been hurt. Subsection 1(1) takes the section 306 decision away from the principal in every case, whatever the facts. Unless one of the section 310 grounds is made out after an investigation, suspension is not available, and the child who was hurt can be left in the same classroom as the child who hurt them. A principal who may suspend is not required to. Restoring the discretion would let the principal weigh the facts of each case. Nothing here suggests that any group of children is more likely to hurt another child. A restored discretion would still be subject to the mitigating factors in O. Reg. 472/07, and its use in these grades should be reported publicly so that any unequal effect can be seen.

8. What to ask

If your child has been hurt, these are questions you can put to the school in writing:

1. Was the incident reported to the principal, and on what date?
2. Has the principal investigated it? When did the investigation start, and when will it finish?
3. What steps have been taken to protect my child’s safety, and what supports will be provided for my child?
4. Was the incident treated as bullying? If so, has the principal considered whether the other pupil’s continuing presence in the school creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person, and what was decided?

Board results on the published audits are on the Board Report Card. Parents and members of the public may report a concern through the public report form. Boards may request a review or report an updated document through the board response form.

9. Data, method and limitations

The figures in section 4 come from the School Board Research review of all 72 Ontario district school boards against Policy/Program Memorandum 144. Each board’s website was reviewed on 23 September 2026 as a parent would use it, with follow-up reviews on 8, 9 and 12 October 2026, and the Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan and the bullying prevention and intervention policy found there were read in full. A document the board designates an administrative procedure, directive or guideline is neither the plan nor the policy, whatever it contains, and was not read for the rule. Every result was confirmed against written rules. Large language models were used to assist with retrieval and first reading. The methods and criteria are available on request.

The review scored each board against the words of the memorandum, in three parts as listed in section 4. A board passed only where all three were present.

Several limits apply. The review reads what a board has published; it does not measure how principals act. It reads the board’s bullying plan and policy. A board may state the rule in another document, such as a suspension procedure, and that is counted in the first row of Table 1 where the bullying documents leave it there. Twenty-five boards are counted because neither a plan nor a policy could be credited: at 23 of them the board’s bullying rules are in an administrative procedure or directive, and at two the only document reached carries none of them. Province-wide data on suspensions by grade were not examined.

Section 5 is a reading of the Education Act, O. Reg. 440/20, O. Reg. 472/07 and Policy/Program Memorandum 144. Policy/Program Memorandum 145 on progressive discipline was read only for its passage on clause 265(1)(m), in a copy retrieved on 13 July 2025. It and a board’s own procedures may say more about investigations and were not otherwise reviewed for this article. The examples in section 5 are hypothetical. They are illustrations of how the wording applies. They do not describe any child, family or school, and they are not findings about any school.

Boards are not named in this article. Section 7 sets out School Board Research’s recommendations.

References

Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO). 2023. “ETFO Member Survey Shows Violence Pervasive in Schools.” Media release, 15 May 2023. https://www.etfo.ca/news-publications/media-releases/etfo-member-survey-shows-violence-pervasive-in-schools

Education Act, RSO 1990, c. E.2, ss. 1(1), 265(1)(m), 300.2, 300.3, 306, 310, 311.1, 316(1.1). https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90e02

Ministry of Education. 2018. Policy/Program Memorandum 145: Progressive Discipline and Promoting Positive Student Behaviour. Issued 17 October 2018. https://www.ontario.ca/document/education-ontario-policy-and-program-direction/policyprogram-memorandum-145

Ministry of Education. 2021. Policy/Program Memorandum 144: Bullying Prevention and Intervention. Issued 25 November 2021. https://www.ontario.ca/document/education-ontario-policy-and-program-direction/policyprogram-memorandum-144

O. Reg. 440/20, Suspension of Elementary School Pupils. https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/200440

O. Reg. 472/07, Behaviour, Discipline and Safety of Pupils. https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/070472

Ontario. 2020. “Ontario Taking Bold Action to Address Racism and Inequity in Schools.” News release, 9 July 2020. https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/57543/ontario-taking-bold-action-to-address-racism-and-inequity-in-schools

Ontario. 2026. “School Suspensions and Expulsions.” Updated 12 August 2026. https://www.ontario.ca/page/school-suspensions-and-expulsions

Reid, Luke. 2017. “Invented Power: An Analysis of the Exclusion Clause in Ontario’s Education Act.” Canadian Association for the Practical Study of Law in Education. https://archdisabilitylaw.ca/resource/invented-power-an-analysis-of-the-exclusion-clause-in-ontarios-education-act/

Legal disclaimer. School Board Research is not a law firm, its researchers are not lawyers, and nothing in this article is legal advice. The results are research findings about documents published on board websites, read against a written method, available on request, on the dates stated. They are not findings that any board has contravened the Education Act, Policy/Program Memorandum 144 or any other law; only a regulator, the Ministry or a court can make that finding. A reader who needs advice about their own situation should consult a lawyer.

School Board Research publishes independent analysis of Ontario school board data and policy. We are not lawyers, and nothing in this publication is legal advice. If you identify an error, please write to info@schoolboardresearch.ca. Corrections are noted on the page where they are made.