School Board Research

School Board Research. Ontario’s Educational Assistants: What the Public Record Shows. Pay, injuries and the rules meant to protect staff and students.

Ontario’s Educational Assistants: What the Public Record Shows

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Researcher
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What Ontario’s educational assistants do, what they are paid, how often they are hurt at work, and whether the rules meant to protect them and the students they support are carried out.

Summary

Educational assistants (EAs) are the school staff who work most closely with students who have special education needs. Their union, with the other education unions, is holding a strike vote this month. This primer sets out, from public sources, what EAs are paid, how that compares with teachers and with other provinces, how often they are absent and injured, and what the law and provincial guidance expect school boards to do about it. Four findings stand out.

  1. EAs are absent far more than teachers, and staff link it to injury. At the three boards the Auditor General examined, 18 per cent of EAs were absent on an average school day, against 10 per cent of special education teachers, and principals, teachers and EAs told the auditors this was “primarily due to the elevated stress and student-related physical injuries they experienced.” Across Ontario, EAs took more sick days in 2023-24 than elementary or secondary teachers.
  2. The rules exist, but there is little check that they are carried out. The Occupational Health and Safety Act requires boards to assess the risk of workplace violence and to warn staff who can be expected to meet a person with a history of violent behaviour, where the risk is likely to expose them to physical injury. When the Ministry of Labour inspected 42 Toronto District School Board schools in 2022-23, chosen partly because of earlier injury reports, violent incidents or work refusals, it issued 20 workplace violence orders at 13 of them. The board complied with all of them, but had no central check that every school has a program and risk assessment. Student safety plans are recommended in provincial guidance, not required, and there is no provincial training standard for EAs.
  3. When an EA is missing, students lose too. Between 49 and 72 per cent of EA absences at the three audited boards went unfilled. The share of elementary principals who had recommended that a student with special education needs stay home rose from 48 per cent in 2014 to 63 per cent in 2024, and principals with daily EA shortages were more likely to have done so.
  4. EAs are above the living wage by the hour; over a year, it depends on their hours and where they live. Rates of about $31 to $37 an hour at the two boards examined are above the living wage in every region of Ontario. But EAs are paid only for the school year, and the full-time week at these boards is 30 or 32.5 hours. Counting the holiday and vacation pay in their collective agreements, a full-time EA earns about $39,700 to $54,900 a year: above the annual living wage in the lowest-cost region; below it in Ottawa for a new Northwest Catholic EA and a little above it for a new Upper Grand EA; below it in the Greater Toronto Area until the upper steps of the Upper Grand grid; and less than half of what a teacher at the top of the grid earns.

1. Introduction

The collective agreements for Ontario’s teachers and education workers expired at the end of August 2026. CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions, which represents about 57,000 education workers, including most EAs, is holding its strike vote from 4 to 18 November 2026 (Jones 2026). The union says it will table its proposals shortly after the vote ends; the parties are waiting for an Ontario Labour Relations Board ruling on which issues are bargained centrally, and bargaining dates are set for 30 November and 15 and 16 December (CUPE-OSBCU 2026). As of 4 November 2026, School Board Research found no published government wage offer to education workers. The Ministry memo of 30 October 2026 setting no hourly increase in 2027 concerns early childhood educators in licensed child care (CBC News 2026); School Board Research reads it as not covering staff employed by school boards.

A companion primer, “Ontario’s Education Unions: What the Public Record Shows”, covers teachers and union dues, and “How We Got Here: Eighty Years of Fights Between Ontario and Its Education Unions” sets out the history of the disputes. This one covers the people who are usually at the side of the students who need the most help. It does not take a side in bargaining. It sets out what a parent would need to know to judge the arguments: what EAs do, what they are paid, how often they are absent and hurt, and whether the protections that are supposed to prevent that are in place.

2. What an Educational Assistant Does

EAs, in the Auditor General’s words, “support students with special education needs by helping with learning activities, behaviour supports, personal care and classroom tasks, under the direction of a teacher” (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 38). Depending on the board they may also be called teacher’s assistants, classroom assistants, child and youth workers, developmental services workers, special needs assistants or student support workers (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 14). Their work often includes personal care, and some are assigned to students whose behaviour can put themselves or others at risk.

Unlike teachers, EAs need no licence. “The Ministry does not provide or mandate minimum entry or training requirements for EAs working with students with special education needs.” At the three boards the Auditor General examined, one required a Grade 12 diploma, and two required an education support diploma, such as Educational Assistant, Child and Youth Worker or Developmental Service Worker, one of them also accepting certain related university degrees. One board required certified behaviour de-escalation training for all EAs, one only for EAs supporting students with safety plans, and one encouraged but did not require it (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 46). Asked to set minimum training and qualification requirements, the Ministry said it “is not in a position to commit to new mandatory minimum training and qualification requirements” (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 63).

Most EAs belong to CUPE locals that bargain centrally through the Ontario School Board Council of Unions; others are in OSSTF, ETFO or the Education Workers’ Alliance of Ontario. All four groups received the same central wage increases in 2022-26 (Ontario n.d.).

3. What EAs Are Paid

EAs are paid by the hour, on wage schedules in each board’s local agreement, with increases set centrally. Two boards’ agreements and postings, and one on-call posting, show the range (Table 1).

Board and positionHourly rateHours stated
Northwest Catholic DSB, interim replacement EA (October 2025 to June 2026)$30.76, “as per Schedule “A” of CUPE collective agreement (September 1, 2025)”30 a week (6 hours a day)
Upper Grand DSB, EA (special education), 1 September 2025 grid$30.92 at hiring to $36.74 at the top of the grid, reached after about five years32.5 a week
Thames Valley DSB, temporary (on-call) EA$26.99 plus 4 per cent vacation payOn call, as needed
Table 1. EA hourly rates and hours. Sources: Northwest Catholic DSB (2025), and for hours Northwest Catholic DSB and CUPE Local 65 (2022, Article 18); Upper Grand DSB and OSSTF District 18 (2022, L39:03 and Appendix A); Thames Valley DSB (n.d.), read 4 November 2026. Rates are illustrations, not a provincial average; the provincial median for the occupation is in Table 4.

An hourly rate becomes a year’s pay only through hours, and EAs are paid for fewer hours than most full-time workers. They work the school year, at least 194 days (Ontario Ministry of Education 2022a); the central terms for EAs in the Upper Grand agreement set “a minimum of 194 workdays to correspond with the school year calendar” (Upper Grand DSB and OSSTF District 18 2022, C8.00). The union says that while the standard full-time week is 35 hours, “some boards schedule full time staff for as little as 30 hours per week” (CUPE-OSBCU 2022). Each board’s local agreement then adds paid holidays and vacation, and the two examined here do it differently.

  • Northwest Catholic. The full-time EA week is 30 hours. EAs are paid for Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday and Victoria Day (the agreement’s “Queen’s Birthday”), half-days before Christmas and New Year’s, and, as ten-month employees, Canada Day and the August Civic Holiday on their last pay of the school year; a memorandum adds a day’s pay for the federal Truth and Reconciliation holiday. That is 13 paid holidays. Instead of vacation time, EAs receive vacation pay on each cheque: 4 per cent of gross pay with up to two years’ service, rising to 6, 8 and 10 per cent, and to a maximum of 12.5 per cent after 21 years (Northwest Catholic DSB and CUPE Local 65 2022, Articles 18, 20 and 21).
  • Upper Grand. The full-time week is 32.5 hours. EAs are paid for seven named holidays (New Year’s Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Boxing Day) and four floating holidays, three of them at Christmas and one on Easter Monday. Canada Day, the August Civic Holiday and Labour Day are paid only to staff who work the scheduled days on both sides, which school-year staff normally are not. EAs also get paid vacation, used first for the Christmas and March break days that are not holidays: 10 days a year in the first three years, 15 days from three years, 20 from 10 years and 25 from 18 years, with any days left over paid out in June (Upper Grand DSB and OSSTF District 18 2022, L39:03, L41:01, L42:03 and L42:04).

Both give more paid holidays than the Employment Standards Act, 2000, whose minimum vacation pay is 4 per cent of wages (6 per cent after five years); Upper Grand’s paid vacation days are worth more than that, while Northwest Catholic’s vacation pay equals the Act’s minimum in the first two years and from five to eight years (Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development n.d.a; n.d.b). On these terms a new full-time EA at Northwest Catholic is paid for 1,242 hours a year (207 days of 6 hours) plus 4 per cent, and a new EA at Upper Grand for 1,397.5 hours (215 days of 6.5 hours). The living wage is calculated for someone working 35 hours a week all year (Heart FM 2025; Narcity 2025), or 1,820 hours (Table 2).

Per hourPer year
Living wage, London, Elgin and Oxford (lowest region)$21.05$38,311
Living wage, Ottawa$23.40$42,588
Living wage, Greater Toronto Area (highest region)$27.20$49,504
Northwest Catholic EA, 30-hour week, under two years’ service (4 per cent vacation pay)$30.76$39,732
Northwest Catholic EA, 30-hour week, 21 years or more (12.5 per cent vacation pay)$30.76$42,979
Upper Grand EA at hiring, 32.5-hour week (10 vacation days)$30.92$43,211
Upper Grand EA at the top of the grid, 32.5-hour week, 3 to 9 years (15 vacation days)$36.74$52,538
Upper Grand EA at the top of the grid, 32.5-hour week, 18 years or more (25 vacation days)$36.74$54,926
Table 2. EA pay against the 2025 living wage. Northwest Catholic: the hourly rate times 6 hours times 207 paid days (194 work days and 13 paid holidays), plus vacation pay. Upper Grand: the hourly rate times 6.5 hours times 194 work days plus 11 paid holidays and the paid vacation days shown. Each rate is applied to a full school year; the Northwest Catholic posting itself runs from 20 October 2025. Living wage annual figures are the hourly rate times 1,820 hours. Sources: Table 1; Northwest Catholic DSB and CUPE Local 65 (2022); Upper Grand DSB and OSSTF District 18 (2022); Heart FM (2025); Narcity (2025).

By the hour, then, the Northwest Catholic and Upper Grand rates are above the living wage in every region of the province. Over a year the answer depends on hours, service and region. A new full-time EA at Northwest Catholic, on a 30-hour week, earns about $39,700: above the annual living wage in the lowest-cost region and below it in Ottawa or the Greater Toronto Area. A new EA at Upper Grand, on 32.5 hours, earns about $43,200, a little above Ottawa’s figure and about the same as the median Ontario tax filer; only in the upper steps of the Upper Grand grid, from about $50,000, does an EA clear the Greater Toronto Area figure, reaching about $52,500 at the top (Figure 1). Northwest Catholic serves the Rainy River and Dryden area and Upper Grand the Guelph area, and neither lies in the three living wage regions shown, so these are comparisons with the range of Ontario’s living wages, not with each board’s own region. The figures leave out the pension and benefits that come with permanent school board jobs; in 2022 the Ministry said EAs earned an average of $49,000 a year with pension and benefits included, while the union put the average pay of its education workers at $39,000 (CBC News 2022). Neither side has published an updated figure for 2026.

Bar chart of annual earnings. Teacher top of grid $120,057; teacher starting salary $70,234; Upper Grand EA at the top of the grid on a 32.5-hour week $52,538; Greater Toronto Area living wage for a full year $49,504; median Ontario tax filer $43,400; Upper Grand EA at the starting rate on a 32.5-hour week $43,211; Ottawa living wage $42,588; Northwest Catholic EA on a 30-hour week $39,732; London, Elgin and Oxford living wage $38,311.
Figure 1. What an EA earns in a school year, against teachers, the living wage and the median Ontario tax filer. EA figures use the hours, paid holidays and vacation in each board’s collective agreement; pension and benefits are not counted. Sources: Table 2; TDSB and OSSTF (2023); Statistics Canada (2025).

4. How That Compares

Against teachers

A new full-time EA earns about $39,700 a year at Northwest Catholic and $43,200 at Upper Grand: 57 to 62 per cent of a starting teacher at the Toronto District School Board ($70,234) and 33 to 36 per cent of a teacher at the top of the grid ($120,057) (TDSB and OSSTF 2023). At the top of the Upper Grand grid an EA earns 44 per cent of a top-of-grid teacher. The EA rates are from a northern board and a Guelph-area board and the teacher grid from Toronto, and rates differ between boards, so the comparison is a guide only. Teachers need a degree and a teaching licence and EAs do not, so some gap is expected; the size of the gap is the question.

Educational assistantsTeachers
Central increases, 2022 to 2026$1.00 an hour in each of four years3, 3, 2.75 and 2.5 per cent
Total over four years14.9 per cent on the Northwest Catholic posted rate; about 15.2 per cent on average, by CUPE’s estimate11.7 per cent compounded
Gain per year by 2025-26About $5,200 (Northwest Catholic, 30-hour week) to $5,600 (Upper Grand, 32.5-hour week)About $7,400 at the start of the grid and $12,600 at the top
Bill 124 remedy, 2019 to 20220.75 per cent for 2019-20 and 2020-21; an arbitrator to set 1.5 to 3.25 per cent for 2021-22 (award not located)0.75 per cent, 0.75 per cent, then 2.75 per cent by arbitration
Table 3. Wage increases, educational assistants and teachers. Ontario prices rose 10.5 per cent from September 2022 to September 2026. EA gains use the paid hours in Table 2. Sources: CUPE (2022); YGK News (2024); CBC News (2023); ETFO (2024); Statistics Canada (2022; 2026).

The $1-an-hour increases were worth more in percentage terms to the lowest paid: CUPE told its members that they equalled 3.59 per cent a year on average across their bargaining unit, or “roughly 15.2% compounded over four years,” and more for the lowest paid (CUPE 2022). Both groups therefore gained a little on inflation from 2022 to 2026, EAs more in percentage terms and teachers more in dollars (Table 3). Over the longer run the picture is less clear. CUPE reports that wage increases for its education workers “totaled just 8.8%” from 2012 to the end of 2021 (CUPE Ontario 2022), while Ontario prices rose 18.4 per cent from September 2012 to September 2021 (Statistics Canada 2017; 2022). On CUPE’s figures, and assuming the 2021-22 remedy fell in the agreed range, wage rates for an average education worker remain roughly 6 to 7.5 per cent behind 2012 prices. This compares wage scales, not individual earnings, which also rise as workers move up the grid.

Against other provinces

Teacher pay in Ontario is at the top of the provinces compared in the companion primer. EA pay is not. On the federal Job Bank’s median hourly wage for elementary and secondary school teacher assistants, Ontario ranks fifth of ten provinces, and its median ($26.00) is below the rates in Table 1 (Table 4).

ProvinceMedian hourly wage
New Brunswick$32.00
British Columbia$29.50
Prince Edward Island$27.61
Newfoundland and Labrador$27.00
Ontario$26.00
Quebec$23.07
Alberta$23.00
Manitoba$22.89
Saskatchewan$22.00
Nova Scotia$21.00
Table 4. Median hourly wage, elementary and secondary school teacher assistants (NOC 43100), wages updated 19 November 2025. Source: Government of Canada (2025). Job Bank covers all employers in the occupation, including private schools, and does not adjust for hours worked.

5. Absence and Injury on the Job

The pay figures do not show the physical side of the job. The clearest public evidence comes from the Auditor General’s 2026 audit of special education at the Toronto Catholic, Peel and Upper Canada boards. “In 2023/24, an average of 18% of EAs across the three school boards combined were absent on any given school day,” against 10 per cent of special education teachers and 11 per cent of other teachers. EAs were absent an average of 44, 33 and 34 days at the three boards, almost twice as many days as teachers (Figure 2). These are absences for any reason. Principals, teachers and EAs at all three boards told the auditors that the high level of EA absences was “primarily due to the elevated stress and student-related physical injuries they experienced” (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 37 to 38).

Grouped bar chart of average days absent in 2023-24. Toronto Catholic DSB: EAs 44, special education teachers 21, other teachers 23. Peel DSB: EAs 33, special education teachers 14, other teachers 18. Upper Canada DSB: EAs 34, special education teachers 15, other teachers 17.
Figure 2. Average days absent per employee, for any reason, 2023-24, at the three boards the Auditor General examined. Source: Auditor General of Ontario (2026, 37 to 38).

The Auditor General also drew the link to staffing: “Without adequate staffing, this led to difficulty managing high-needs students in large classrooms and behavioural challenges. For EAs especially, it resulted in heightened stress, more frequent physical injuries and a corresponding high rate of absenteeism” (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 38).

The province-wide figures point the same way. EAs “took the highest number of sick days in 2023-24, at 22.01 days, up from 18.19” in 2018-19; secondary teachers took 13.07 and elementary teachers 15.36. The cost of supply staff to cover teachers, EAs and early childhood educators rose from $658 million in 2018-19 to more than $1.018 billion in 2023-24. The total value of Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) claims from Ontario’s 72 school boards more than doubled between 2018 and 2025, to $58.1 million, while the number of claims rose 13 per cent (McGinn 2026). That reporting does not separate claims by job or cause, and chronic mental stress became compensable for injuries on or after 1 January 2018, so the two years are not measured on quite the same basis (Workplace Safety and Insurance Board 2024).

What staff report

Surveys add detail, with the caution that most are run by or for the unions and are not random samples. In a CUPE-OSBCU survey of more than 12,000 of its members, conducted in 2024 and published in 2025, 95.8 per cent of EAs and child and youth workers said they experience violent or disruptive incidents in their workplace, 54.8 per cent said they experience violent incidents every day, and 73.9 per cent said their work area is evacuated at least sometimes (CUPE-OSBCU 2025; Figure 3). The union did not publish how respondents were recruited or how incidents were defined; the Auditor General cites the same survey (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 38). In OSSTF’s 2023 survey, conducted for the union by Strategic Communications, “Three quarters of educational assistants (75%) report having had physical force used against them” in the 2022-23 school year; 89 per cent of the EAs who responded were women (OSSTF 2024). University of Ottawa researchers surveying nearly 4,000 CUPE education workers estimated that 18 per cent of EAs “would be designated with PTSD following their worst incident of harassment” (University of Ottawa 2021), and the same team’s 2025 study reported that violence is “increasingly framed as ‘part of the job’” (University of Ottawa 2025).

Bar chart from the CUPE-OSBCU survey. Experience violent or disruptive incidents at work: EAs and child and youth workers 95.8 per cent, all respondents 74.6 per cent. Experience violent incidents every day: EAs and child and youth workers 54.8 per cent. Work area evacuated at least sometimes: 73.9 and 46.1 per cent. Evacuated every day: 10.5 and 5.9 per cent.
Figure 3. Violent or disruptive incidents reported by school board workers. A union survey of its own members, not a random sample. Source: CUPE-OSBCU (2025).

What the claims data show

Independent claims data are older. The Institute for Work & Health found that accepted WSIB lost-time claims due to workplace violence among women in Ontario’s education sector rose from 0.89 per 1,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2002 to 2.47 in 2015, overtaking both men and women in health care (Figure 4). The study covers the education sector as a whole, teachers and support staff together, and its data stop in 2015 (Institute for Work & Health 2019).

Slope chart of accepted WSIB lost-time claims due to workplace violence per 1,000 full-time equivalent workers, 2002 to 2015. Women in education rose from 0.89 to 2.47. Men in health care went from 1.85 to 1.75. Women in health care went from 1.05 to 0.99. Men in education rose from about 0.18 to 0.47.
Figure 4. Accepted WSIB lost-time claims due to workplace violence, per 1,000 full-time equivalent workers, Ontario, education sector as a whole. Source: Institute for Work & Health (2019).

Protective equipment

In 2018 and 2019, CBC reported protective equipment, including padded jackets, spit masks and Kevlar vests and sleeves, being used by teachers and EAs at several boards, including Ottawa-Carleton, Upper Canada, Waterloo Region and Durham. An Upper Canada teacher said the gear had become “standard issue” for EAs; the board’s superintendent of safe schools said there was no standard practice for teachers and that the equipment recommended is “based on very specific components of a student’s learning plan.” CBC reported Ottawa-Carleton as saying the gear is normally worn for a short period while strategies are put in place (Miller 2019; CBC News 2018). School Board Research found no provincial count of protective equipment issued to school staff.

The province’s own training material uses an EA as its example of a physical assault by a student: an EA “assaulted by a Grade 4 student during morning recess,” with injuries to the head and shoulder, later diagnosed with a concussion and unable to work for at least a few days (Ontario Ministry of Education 2022b).

6. The Rules Meant to Protect Staff and Students

Ontario does not lack rules on this. They fall into five groups.

  • Risk assessment. “An employer shall assess the risks of workplace violence that may arise from the nature of the workplace, the type of work or the conditions of work,” and must reassess them “as often as is necessary” (Occupational Health and Safety Act, ss. 32.0.3(1) and (4)). The employer’s workplace violence program “shall … include measures and procedures to control the risks identified in the assessment required under subsection 32.0.3 (1) as likely to expose a worker to physical injury” (s. 32.0.2(2)(a)). The duty is the board’s, as employer, and the assessment is of the workplace.
  • Warning staff. The employer’s and supervisor’s duty to inform workers includes “the duty to provide information, including personal information, related to a risk of workplace violence from a person with a history of violent behaviour” if the worker can be expected to encounter that person and the risk “is likely to expose the worker to physical injury,” disclosing no more than “is reasonably necessary to protect the worker from physical injury” (Occupational Health and Safety Act, ss. 32.0.5(3) and (4)).
  • Student safety plans. The provincial guide describes a student safety plan as “a plan developed for a student whose behaviour is known to pose an ongoing risk to themselves, other students, workers or other people in general.” It recommends that the plan be developed with “all school board workers who have direct and routine involvement with the student,” that parents be consulted, and that “all workers (teaching and non-teaching, permanent or occasional) have access to the student safety plan.” The guide’s language is advisory: plans “should be reviewed and updated regularly,” and boards “should consider” reviewing them after a violent incident and at least annually (Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development 2023a). School Board Research found no statute or regulation that requires a safety plan for each student whose behaviour poses a risk.
  • Discipline and exclusion. In considering whether to suspend a student for an activity listed in section 306(1), a principal “shall take into account any mitigating or other factors prescribed by the regulations” (Education Act, s. 306(2)), including whether “the pupil does not have the ability to control his or her behaviour” and, where they would mitigate the seriousness of the activity, for a student with an Individual Education Plan, “whether the behaviour was a manifestation of a disability identified in the pupil’s individual education plan” and “whether appropriate individualized accommodation has been provided” (O. Reg. 472/07, ss. 2 and 3). For “physical assault on another person that causes bodily harm requiring treatment by a medical practitioner,” a principal “shall suspend” the student, and the same factors go to the length of the suspension (Education Act, s. 310). Separately, a principal may, “subject to an appeal to the board,” refuse to admit 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 says such exclusions “should be used as a last resort” (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 47).
  • Students’ rights. Under the Human Rights Code, school boards have a legal duty to accommodate students with disabilities, short of undue hardship, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s policy sets out how that duty applies to discipline and safe schools (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2018). Students receiving special education services averaged 16 per cent of students but 43 per cent of those suspended between 2019-20 and 2023-24 (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 51).

EAs also have a right to refuse unsafe work that teachers do not fully share. A teacher cannot refuse work “where the circumstances are such that the life, health or safety of a student is in imminent jeopardy,” but other school board workers, including EAs, “have the right to refuse work when they have reason to believe that workplace violence is likely to endanger them” (Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development 2023b), through the procedure set out in section 43 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

7. Whether the Rules Are Followed

The public record shows the protections are not consistently in place, though the clearest evidence comes from one board.

  • Missing programs and risk assessments. The Ministry of Labour carried out 69 inspections at 42 Toronto District School Board schools between 1 September 2022 and 31 August 2023. The schools chosen included those where the Ministry had been called about injury reports, violent incidents or work refusals. It issued 27 orders, 20 of them about workplace violence at 13 schools, all for not having a site-specific workplace violence program and/or risk assessment or reassessment. One school had no documented risk assessment; two had not updated theirs since 2018. The board had complied with all 20 orders by 1 May 2024, but the Auditor General found it had no central process to make sure every school has a program and risk assessments in place (Auditor General of Ontario 2024, 24 to 25). The same audit put the board’s rate of violent incidents, about 17 per 10,000 students, below the provincial average of about 22 (Auditor General of Ontario 2024, 2).
  • Risk assessments not done, or not known. In ETFO’s 2023 survey of Toronto District School Board teachers, cited by the Auditor General, only 12 per cent said their school administrator conducts a risk assessment or reassessment in response to at least some violent incidents, and 59 per cent did not know whether risk assessments were done (Auditor General of Ontario 2024, 25).
  • Incidents narrowly counted. The violent incidents boards report to the Ministry each year include serious events such as “physical assault causing bodily harm requiring medical attention,” and not incidents after school hours (Auditor General of Ontario 2024, 13; Ontario Ministry of Education 2011). Even so, the count rose from 2,499 in 2018-19 to 4,424 in 2023-24 (Global News 2025), and the Auditor General found the Toronto District School Board had under-reported its incidents from 2017-18 to 2021-22 by about 9 per cent (Auditor General of Ontario 2024, 2). Incidents that cause no bodily harm requiring medical attention fall outside the provincial count, which on the survey descriptions may include much of the hitting, biting and kicking EAs report.
  • At one board, staffing below its own estimate of need. At the Peel District School Board, schools were understaffed by a net 51 EAs in 2024-25 against the board’s own method for deciding how many each school needs; half of its 217 elementary schools were short, and the shortfall “resulted from adjustments the board made to EA allocations to remain within its EA budget” (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 43).
  • Training left to each board. With no provincial standard, whether an EA working with a student who may hurt them has been trained in de-escalation depends on which board employs them (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 46).

None of this shows that any board is breaking the law today; orders are complied with, and practice differs between schools and boards. It does show that the protections exist on paper and depend, school by school, on whether the board, through its principals, keeps each school’s risk assessment current, writes the safety plan where one is needed, tells the staff who need to know and finds the staff to carry it out, with little provincial check that it happens.

8. When There Is No EA: The Cost to Students

A missing EA is not only a staff problem. EA absences at the three audited boards “went unfilled between 49% and 72% of the time,” more often than teacher absences, and “Unfilled absences can result in students being left without the assistance they need to participate safely and meaningfully in classroom activities.” Schools sometimes combined classes and moved EAs to the students with the highest needs (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 38 to 39).

The other consequence is exclusion. The Auditor General reports People for Education’s finding that the share of elementary principals recommending that students with special education needs stay home rose from 48 per cent in 2014 to 63 per cent in 2024, and that principals whose schools had daily EA shortages were more likely to have done so, most often citing safety and a lack of support. Almost a third (31 per cent) of respondents to Community Living Ontario’s 2023 survey said students had been sent home or told to stay home because the school could not meet their needs, and 29 per cent of caregivers said their child had been secluded in school, “placed in a separate space away from their peers, often behind locked or blocked doors.” In the Auditor General’s own survey, 39 per cent of teachers said they had observed an undocumented exclusion. The Ministry drafted a policy on exclusions in 2024, but its development “was paused in January 2025 before the provincial election” (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 48).

Two gaps can therefore open at once. A student whose behaviour puts staff at risk may be in a classroom without a current safety plan or a trained adult, while another student, or the same one on a different day, is sent home without a record at a school short of EAs. Both are gaps between what the law and provincial guidance expect and what happens, and both fall on students with disabilities and on the adults closest to them. When a classroom is evacuated, every student in it, including the student in distress, loses time in class.

9. Where the Two Sides Stand

The education workers’ union says its proposals “will lay the foundation for negotiations to improve staffing levels, wages, benefits, job security” (CUPE-OSBCU 2026); in its survey, 95 per cent of EAs and child and youth workers said there are students at their school who need EA support and do not have it (CUPE-OSBCU 2025). Critics argue that “more spending likely won’t fix Ontario’s school violence problem” and that the government “should empower and encourage school administrators to suspend violent students” (Zwaagstra 2025). Disability advocates and the Ontario Human Rights Commission point to the duty to accommodate and to exclusions that go unrecorded (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2018; Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 48).

The province has acted on attendance and on safety in other ways. It has required every board to have a non-disciplinary attendance support program by June 2026 (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 39), announced $24 million in 2023 to reduce violence and improve student safety, including funding for educational assistants, and required School Resource Officer programs where police services offer them (McGinn 2026). Provincial special education funding rose 15 per cent from 2019-20 to 2023-24, in line with inflation, while boards’ special education spending rose 19 per cent (Auditor General of Ontario 2026, 14, 56). The question for parents is not whether each side cares about safety but which measures each proposes, and whether the protections already in law are being carried out.

10. Conclusion: Ask Your MPP, and Write to Your Board

The central terms for EAs, the funding that pays for them and the provincial guidance on safety plans and training are set by the province, so the Minister of Education answers for them and your MPP can ask. Whether a school’s risk assessment is current, whether a student has a safety plan and whether staff have been told is the board’s responsibility, and the trustees answer for it. Parents have standing: Ontario’s publicly funded schools serve 2.1 million students and employ 145,522 educators, and private school and home-schooling families are not counted in those figures (Ontario Ministry of Education n.d.).

  1. Find your MPP by street address and postal code at ola.org, and ask whether the government will set a provincial training standard for EAs, which it told the Auditor General it is “not in a position to commit” to, require a safety plan for each student whose behaviour is known to pose a risk, and finish the exclusions policy paused in January 2025.
  2. Write to your trustees, at any time and without the school’s permission, and ask the board for its records: the number of Ministry of Labour orders at its schools, the share of EA absences that went unfilled last year, and the method it uses to decide how many EAs each school gets.
  3. If your child has an EA or an Individual Education Plan, ask the school in writing whether there is a safety plan, who has seen it, and how support continues when the EA is absent. “The Parent Playbook” sets out how.
  4. Read “Outside the Room” for how parents have changed provincial policy before, and check your board’s published results on the Board Report Card.

The adults at the side of the students who need the most help should be able to go home uninjured, and those students should be able to stay in class with the support they are owed; the public record does not yet show that either can be counted on.

Annex: Data, Method and Limitations

Pay. The Northwest Catholic rate is from the board’s own postings, which give $30.76 an hour “as per Schedule “A” of CUPE collective agreement (September 1, 2025)”; the wage schedule printed in the 2022-2026 agreement the board posts shows $29.66 for that date, so the postings appear to include a later adjustment, and this primer uses the posted rate. The Upper Grand rates are the 1 September 2025 minimum and maximum for Educational Assistant – Special Education in the agreement filed with the Ministry of Labour; new EAs start at the minimum and move up one step each 1 January, except that an EA hired after 1 November waits until the second 1 January. The Thames Valley rate is from an undated public listing for on-call work, so no annual figure is given for it. These boards are illustrations, not a provincial average, and are named only as the sources of the rates; the rates are above the Job Bank median for the occupation in Ontario. Annual figures use each agreement’s full-time hours (30 and 32.5 a week), 194 work days (the school year: the Upper Grand central terms set “a minimum of 194 workdays”, although its local clause L39:02(a) describes the work year as excluding professional activity days, and the Northwest Catholic agreement counts 1,164 hours, or 194 days of 6 hours, as a year of EA service), the paid holidays in Articles 20.01 and 20.07 and the Truth and Reconciliation memorandum (Northwest Catholic, 13 days) and L41:01 (Upper Grand, 11 days, leaving out Canada Day, the August Civic Holiday and Labour Day, which are paid only to staff who work the scheduled days on both sides), and the vacation terms in Article 21.01(b) (Northwest Catholic, vacation pay as a percentage of gross pay, taken here as including holiday pay) and L42:03 (Upper Grand, paid vacation days). Each rate is applied to a full school year, although the Northwest Catholic posting runs from 20 October 2025. The figures are for a permanent full-time EA: under Articles 31.03, 31.06 and 31.07 of the Northwest Catholic agreement, casual staff, and casual or external temporary staff filling an interim position, do not receive the Article 21 vacation pay. Individual pay also depends on the days a given school year has and on unpaid absences. Pension, benefits, summer earnings and Employment Insurance are not counted. The teacher figures are the 2025-26 Toronto District School Board secondary grid used in the companion primer.

Living wage. The Ontario Living Wage Network is an advocacy network, not a government body; its rates estimate the hourly wage needed to cover basic expenses in each region, for full-time work of 35 hours a week over 52 weeks. Annual figures here are that rate times 1,820 hours.

Inflation. Ontario all-items Consumer Price Index (2002=100): September 2012, 122.0; September 2021, 144.4; September 2022, 154.1; September 2026, 170.3. The 2012 to 2026 comparison combines CUPE’s reported 8.8 per cent for 2012 to 2021, the Bill 124 remedy (0.75, 0.75 and 1.5 to 3.25 per cent) and CUPE’s reported 15.2 per cent average for 2022 to 2026; it describes wage scales for an average education worker, not every EA. CUPE, using a different measure, put inflation from 2012 to 2021 at 19.5 per cent (CUPE Ontario 2022).

Other provinces. Job Bank medians cover everyone in the occupation, including private and independent schools, and are not adjusted for hours or days worked.

Absences and injuries. The Auditor General’s absence figures are for three boards and the 2023-24 school year and include absences for any reason; the link to injury is what staff told the auditors and the Auditor General’s own conclusion, not a measured breakdown. Province-wide sick day, supply cost and WSIB figures are as reported by The Globe and Mail from school board data and are not broken down by job or cause. The Institute for Work & Health figures cover the education sector as a whole to 2015. The CUPE-OSBCU and OSSTF surveys are surveys of union members; they are not random samples of the workforce, and their questions differ, so their figures are not combined. The protective equipment reports are from news coverage of named boards in 2018 and 2019.

Law. Statutory text was read on e-Laws, and from the e-Laws consolidation of the Education Act dated 22 September 2026. The provincial guide on workplace violence in school boards is guidance; where it uses “should,” it is a recommendation, not a legal requirement. School Board Research found no statute or regulation requiring a safety plan for every student whose behaviour poses a risk, but boards may require them in their own policies. Suspension rules for students in Junior Kindergarten to Grade 3 are modified by O. Reg. 440/20 and are not described here.

Bargaining. No government wage offer to education workers had been published as of 4 November 2026.

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At three boards the Auditor General audited, 18 per cent of educational assistants were absent on an average school day in 2023-24, against 10 per cent of special education teachers.
At three boards the Auditor General audited, up to 72 per cent of educational assistant absences went unfilled: between 49 and 72 per cent of the time, more often than teacher absences.
In 2024, 63 per cent of elementary principals had recommended that a student with special education needs stay home, up from 48 per cent in 2014.

Background photos: Joshua Hoehne, UThan Zaw and Yucel M on Unsplash.

References

Legal disclaimer. School Board Research is not a law firm, its researchers are not lawyers, and nothing in this article is legal advice. 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.