Author: Researcher
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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For fourteen years each board drafted its own, parents objected to what some boards asked, and in May 2026 the province repealed the survey rather than fix it.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…