Latest Articles
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Who Won Ontario’s 2026 Trustee Races: Acclamations, Close Counts and Endorsements
Two in five of Ontario’s trustee seats were settled without a vote, and some contested races came down to a handful of votes. Where unions and labour councils endorsed candidates, their candidates and the winners were largely the same people.
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One Rule, 72 Boards, 4,861 Schools: How a Ministry Policy Reaches the Classroom
A rule from the Ministry of Education reaches a classroom only after a school board and a school act on it. This article follows one rule, the sign PPM 128 requires at school entrances, from the Ministry to the door. The code of conduct documents of six of 72 boards require it. The article also…
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Who Funds Trustee Campaigns? What 849 Statements from 2022 Show
Two in five of the 2022 trustee campaign statements are nil, half of the campaigns that gave a total cost less than $2,185, and candidates paid for most of it themselves. One in seven of the statements checked does not add up.
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Good Governance: In Their Own Words
School Board Research asked Ontario’s trustee candidates one question about governance. Of the 122 who answered, the most common idea was that a policy has to work in practice, not only on paper. New candidates answered far more often than sitting trustees.
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Outside the Room: How Ontario Parents Have Changed Provincial Education Policy
Several of the most consequential changes to Ontario education in the past fifty years began with parents working outside the formal channels built for them. This article looks at ten of those campaigns, from 1977 to 2022, and what they had in common.
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About $14 Million in 2024-25: What Ontario’s Trustee Associations Received and What the Public Sees
Every year, Ontario school boards and the Ministry of Education send money to four provincial trustee associations. In 2024-25 it came to an estimated $14 million, the cost of about 137 teachers. This article sets out where the money comes from, what is published about where it goes, how a parent can find what their…
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Promised to Parents, Not Provided: Reporting Paths, Contacts and Communication at 72 School Boards
Ontario’s rules for school boards promise parents a way to report, a person to contact and communication they can read. School Board Research drew together thirteen requirements from three reviews of all 72 district school boards. No board’s code of conduct names a role and a method for reporting, five boards’ bullying documents say where…
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Said, Not Shown: Ontario School Boards Say They Deal With Bullying. What They Publish Says Less.
Ontario school boards publish documents saying they deal with bullying. School Board Research read those documents at all 72 boards against the province’s memorandum, PPM 144. No board met all fourteen requirements tested. Twenty-five boards publish neither the plan nor the policy the memorandum describes, most keep their bullying rules in an administrative procedure that…
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Updated, Not Implemented: What 72 School Board Codes of Conduct Still Leave Out
School Board Research read the code of conduct documents of all 72 Ontario school boards against the province’s memorandum, PPM 128. No board met all eight requirements tested. The requirements added in 2024 are the ones most often missing, and at most boards it is not clear which document is the policy and which is…
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Every Student, Every Year: Ontario Schools That Bring Whole Classes to the Standard
A common reply to criticism of Ontario’s EQAO results is that no school can bring every student to the standard. EQAO’s own data shows otherwise: each year hundreds of schools have every Grade 3 or Grade 6 student at the standard in a subject, including large schools and schools in higher-poverty neighbourhoods, and the leading…
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Not Readable, Not Current, Not There: Accessibility Documents on Ontario School Board Websites
Ontario’s accessibility regulation refers to four documents a school board makes public about accessibility, and to telling the public that accessible formats are available. We walked all 72 board websites on 6 October 2026 looking for them. Four in five of the files boards post fail basic checks a screen reader needs, most of the…
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Yes on the Form, Not in the File
On their accessibility compliance reports, Ontario school boards are asked whether their websites meet the province’s accessibility standard. We gathered every answer that could be found for the 72 boards from 2015 to 2025 and set it beside the 2026 file checks on each board’s accessibility documents. Almost every answer found is Yes. The files…
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Every 2026 Trustee Candidate in Ontario, and Their Answers on Good Governance
Every candidate for school board trustee in Ontario, 1,218 people at 72 boards, is listed on this site with one question put to each: will good governance be your first priority, starting with the three documents the province requires every board to keep? This article sets out what the question asks, where the duty comes…
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The 2026 Results Are Public: What We Found at 72 School Boards, and What We Wrote to Two Ministers
The 2026 Board Report Card is public: results for all 72 Ontario district school boards on codes of conduct, bullying prevention and intervention, and accessibility documents. No board met every requirement tested. The sector results went to the Minister of Education and the Minister for Seniors and Accessibility on 15 October 2026, and the letters…
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How Ontario Sets Director of Education Pay
A child who started kindergarten in 2017 is in Grade 8. Since then violent incidents reported by Ontario school boards have gone from 2,499 a year to 4,424, results have moved by less than two points, and Director of Education pay has risen at 71 of 72 boards. The rule that sets that pay was…
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What Happened to Ontario’s School Climate Surveys
From 2012 the Minister of Education held the power to prescribe Ontario’s school climate survey. It never did. For fourteen years each board drafted its own, parents objected to what some boards asked, and in May 2026 the province repealed the survey rather than fix it. Two months later the Ministry deleted the requirement from…
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Policy, Procedure or Plan: Two New Guides Explain the Difference
School Board Research has published two companion guides, one for parents and one for trustees and board staff, on the difference between a school board policy, an administrative procedure and a required plan. The Ministry of Education relies on the distinction between policy and procedure, but School Board Research found no Ministry publication that explains…
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Trustee Training and the Governance Gap
Ontario made governance training mandatory for school board trustees in 2025, but required only six of 21 modules. The modules on roles, policymaking and planning were left optional, no module defines a plan, and none explains the policies and plans the Education Act requires boards to keep. This note sets out the evidence and the…
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Why We Use EQAO Results, and Why Parents Fought for Them
EQAO results are the only public, independent measure of student learning that covers every Ontario school board. Provincial testing exists because parents demanded it, and its main weaknesses are arguments for better measurement rather than less. We show what board-level results reveal, using the Grade 3 results of the board with the lowest reading scores…
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Growth at the Top, Decline at the Door: What Ontario’s Enrolment Data Show
Ontario’s public school enrolment is not falling province-wide: it rose 2.7 per cent between 2018-19 and 2024-25. The decline is concentrated in large GTA and northern boards, and a shrinking Junior Kindergarten intake points to broader decline ahead. We also reconcile these figures with the Fraser Institute’s 2026 enrolment report.
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The Parent Playbook: How to Advocate for Your Child’s Safety in Ontario Schools
For many parents, the system does not make it easy to raise a safety concern. That is not speculation — it is one of the most consistent findings from the research conducted by School Board Research and the investigations documented by the Hold Schools Accountable Parent Network (HSA). Across Ontario, parents who raise safety concerns…
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The Putting Student Achievement First Act, 2026: Same Issues, Different Job Title
The Putting Student Achievement First Act, 2026 names trustees as the governance failure and then keeps them as the hiring authority for the CEO. A close read of the Media Briefing, the six-part governance package, and what the Act does not do.
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Shorter Programs, Same Problems: Why Ontario’s B.Ed Reform Misses the Point
The province is redesigning the pipeline without fixing what flows through it. Until faculties of education teach evidence-based literacy and mathematics instruction, program length is a distraction. School Board Research | April 12, 2026 On April 10, 2026, Minister of Education Paul Calandra and Minister of Colleges and Universities Nolan Quinn announced that Ontario will…
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Following the Money: Executive Compensation and Board Spending Under Scrutiny
Ontario’s publicly funded school boards face real financial pressures. Declining enrolment, rising costs, and growing demands on front-line staff are widely acknowledged. But the conversation about funding is incomplete without examining how boards are spending the money they already have — particularly at the senior leadership level. The Hold Schools Accountable Parent Network (HSA) has…
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Violence in Ontario Schools: What the Evidence Shows and What Parents Need to Know
Violence in Ontario’s publicly funded schools has risen by 77% since 2018–19, according to data obtained by Global News through Freedom of Information requests to the Ministry of Education.[1] In the 2023–24 school year — the most recent year available — 4,424 violent incidents were reported, up from 2,499 in 2018–19.[1] And as investigators from…
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The 2026 Ontario Budget and K–12 Education: What Parents and Communities Need to Know
An analysis of the education-related provisions in Ontario’s 2026 Budget, “A Plan to Protect Ontario,” released March 26, 2026. The 2026 Ontario Budget arrives at a moment of considerable fiscal pressure, with the province projecting a $12.3 billion deficit in 2025–26 and $13.8 billion in 2026–27 (Table 3.1, p. 174). While the budget frames its education…
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A Cover-Up Culture? How Boards Control the Narrative on School Safety
When a serious incident occurs at a school — an assault, a threat, a pattern of violence — parents expect transparency. They expect to be told what happened, what is being done about it, and what safeguards are in place to protect their children. The evidence, however, suggests that many Ontario school boards operate very…
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Most Ontario Boards Fell Short on Selected Code of Conduct Clauses
Policy/Program Memorandum 128 (PPM 128) is not a suggestion. It is a Ministry of Education mandate governing student behaviour and school safety — the provincial baseline that every publicly funded school board in Ontario is required to meet.[1] And yet, an audit conducted by School Board Research reveals that the majority of boards are falling…