The Ford government says a plan to give students a portion of their grade for showing up to class was suggested by teachers who are struggling to manage classrooms, where a growing number of kids are skipping lessons.
As part of new legislation, Education Minister Paul Calandra unveiled plans Monday to make attendance part of final marks for students in Grades 10, 11 and 12.
The change would make participating and attending class worth 15 per cent of the final score in Grade 9 and Grade 10, as well as being worth 10 per cent for Grades 11 and 12. The province will also move to mandatory written exams.
Calandra said the idea came from teachers he had spoken to since taking over as education minister a year ago.
“It is an idea that came exclusively from my engagement with teachers; it wasn’t on my radar at all,” he said.
“I have to be honest with you, when I took over the position, I actually still thought exams were happening all over the place, I actually still thought attendance was part of the mark, and then I realized that for many, many years it had been taken out.”
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The minister said courses without participation didn’t create an incentive for students to be in class.
“One hundred per cent of their mark is based on coursework, so students can pop in and out as they like and their mark was not impacted at all,” he said on Tuesday.
“And at the same time, some kids were working really, really hard and there was no way to acknowledge their hard work as part of their marks.”
The rate of absenteeism has grown dramatically in recent years.
Malin Leahy, a vice-president for the Ontario Secondary Teachers’ Federation, said the policy was “low-hanging fruit” that failed to address the core issues in classrooms.
“I would rather that the government funded the system properly so that we wouldn’t be seeing these gaps in attendance at all,” she told Global News, pointing out issues outside a student’s control, like transport, could impact attendance.
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“This is a very small percentage of students, I would imagine,” she added. “Most of our students show up to school every day because, one, they want to learn. They show up to school because they feel safe … They’re not showing up to school because they’re being punished for not attending. And I think that this is the piece that’s missing from the minister’s announcement today.”
Ontario Liberal interim leader John Fraser echoed the concern, suggesting that children not feeling safe or supported in classrooms was behind a trend of increasing absenteeism.
“If your school is not a welcoming environment, if your class is too big, if you’re not getting the attention you need, if you have a special need, if school is not working for you because you don’t feel welcome, why are you gonna go?” he asked.
Asked why he had chosen the carrot of marks for attending rather than the stick of punishing those who don’t turn up, Calandra said the entire policy was based on what he’d heard from teachers.
“I think our teachers are professionals and they understand what they need and what their students need to achieve,” he said.
Lol. If success can “pop in and out” as they please without impacting their grades then doesn’t that speak to ineffective teaching??
We need know what teacher group recommended these changes to education minister who his own sister fight him because try step on family when his died just like the Pc doing now Manipulation this government can’t trusted getting one antic teacher opinion that’s not a source of fact where is the survey ousted of the teacher who did these survey are we supposed to take that he actually talked to teacher I think no just look just look at his shifty eyes looking at this guy gives Me the Eb , Jeebies
Pc are a bunch just centralizing every Dougie office that not democracy that’s just plain Rt I’m open communist wake up people the communist are home to roost
Bad idea.
Students should LOSE marks if they don’t attend class.
As a teacher, the students not attending do so because they are disengaged. Adding a mark component won’t fix chronic truancy because the students who skip don’t care about a mark-just a 35% or pass. (35% or a mark close to it is the government recommendation for credit recovery for students to earn the credit). We need programs to re engage not punish.
Gentle parenting and now gentle schooling? Next the teachers will base 10% of a students grade if they can write their own name or if they wear proper attire to school…
Will their future employers have to bribe them to go to work? Participation prize for showing up? LOL
And participating… But they didn’t mention that of course… Now the introverts will fail.. this is the filtering and control of the liberal government of Doug Ford