How Can Ontario Review EQAO and Student Academic Achievement Without Input from Teachers?

"Minister of Education Paul Calandra wants to examine EQAO and conduct a comprehensive review of how to support student academic achievement. Catholic Teachers call on the Minister to appoint classroom teachers to this body, to ensure that the review is conducted with the input of frontline professionals that know our schools best."

This review is ambitious and tackles critical topics, like ensuring that teachers have the tools and resources they need to teach and best support student success – something Catholic teachers have long advocated for.

This is too important to get wrong.

With only two people appointed to the advisory body, neither of whom are teachers, we are concerned that the Minister will be making recommendations for teachers, without actually hearing from teachers.

Any advisory body reviewing Ontario’s publicly funded education system must include voices from across our school communities, including teachers, education workers, parents, students, and other education experts. This cannot be another top-down, bureaucratic process, where decisions about our students’ future are made behind closed doors.

We urge Minister Calandra to do things differently this time around, for the sake of Ontario students and the future of this province.

This advisory body could be a real opportunity for meaningful reform, a chance to re-evaluate the usefulness of EQAO and to create a concrete plan to improve the quality of Ontario’s publicly funded education system. Teacher expertise and classroom experience are extremely valuable, and free for the Minister and advisory board to access, if and when they are ready to meaningfully collaborate with us.

Catholic teachers are in the classroom with students every day. We have the insights needed to address why students are struggling and how to better support them. We know the missing classroom resources teachers need to best support their students. We see the progress and potential in our students every day. All we need is a partner in the government to dignify our expertise, invite us to the table, and collaborate on a solution.”

- René Jansen in de Wal, President of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association