The Ontario government has announced today that it will move away from the academic streaming in Grade 9, while also saying it will implement a ban on suspensions for students in junior kindergarten to Grade 3.
“Streaming”- was a practice used in Ontario, to which students must choose to pursue either an “academic” or an “applied” stream when they come into high school. This has been shown to affect black and low-income students when it comes to graduation rates and the chances of them attending a post-secondary institution. A 2017 report by York University professor Carl James, shows that black teens in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) were being streamed into the applied courses at significantly higher rates than other students.
In the report, 53 per cent of black students were in the academic stream as compared to the 81 per cent of white and 80 per cent of other racialized students. On the opposite side, the report shows 39 per cent of black students were in applied programs, comparing that to 18 per cent of other racialized groups and 16 per cent of white students being put in the applied stream.
Ontario was one of the few places in Canada that continued to separate students to the hands-on “applied” stream or the post-secondary track “academic” stream as they start high school.
While the Ministry of Education has also announced it will implement a ban to suspend students from junior kindergarten to Grade 3. This is another practice that has been shown to impact black students.
In the same 2017 study by James, 42 per cent of all black students in Toronto, York, Peel and Durham school boards had been suspended at least once by the time they leave high school, which prompted a review of the Peel District School Board that painted a picture of dysfunction among admin staff at schools who are ill-prepared to deal with anti-racism directly affecting students.
Details of the announcement were announced early Monday morning. In an exclusive interview from the Toronto Star, Education Minister Stephen Lecce said that the streaming practice was a “systemic, racist, discriminatory” practice.
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