An investigation into Saskatchewan’s education system highlighted the need for literacy supports in the province and stakeholders are seeing this report as an opportunity for improvements.
“Equitable access to learning opportunities, it just doesn’t exist,” said Sheryl Harrow-Yurach, executive director for Foundations Learning and Skills Saskatchewan.
The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission began a systemic investigation when it received complaints from 29 families back in 2020 who claimed their children faced discrimination in schools due to disabilities like dyslexia. The report gave recommendations on how to create more supports for kids with those kinds of needs, but also on how to increase literacy rates overall.
Harrow-Yurach said there are many reasons why kids and adults struggle, noting learning disabilities are a big part of that, but said not everybody moves from Kindergarten to grade 12 in a linear process.
“Reading skills today are even more important than they were in 1979.”
Harrow-Yurach said in most workplaces many of the day-to-day tasks pull from how strong our reading, comprehension and writing skills are.
“That’s mainly due to the impact of technology, in our workplaces, in our homes, it is just integrated into our lives more than it ever has been.”
Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Education outlined targets for students back in 2020 to have 80 per cent of students meeting or exceeding the grade level in reading, writing and math.
The report noted that goal leaves about 36,000 students, or one in five students not meeting those goals.
Numbers for previous years were much lower, noting that only 66.8 per cent of students in Grade 1 met or exceeded that standard in 2019.
That number drops even further when looking at First Nations, Inuit or Metis children, where only 40 per cent of children in Grade 1 met or exceeded that goal.
Harrow-Yurach said children meeting grade level is impacted by several things, pointing to whether learning disabilities are caught early on and whether schools and teachers have the resources and training to support those kids, but she said there’s a factor in there that often gets forgotten.
“Do the parents have the literacy skills themselves to be able to support the child?”
She said one in three adults struggle with literacy, adding she often sees situations where parents may not be able to support their child as much as they may want.
“I believe that this report can be a watershed moment for families with children with learning disabilities, but not only them, just an opportunity that will open the conversation about what is equitable access to education.”
She said every parent wants what is best for their child, but said if a parent has their time spent on fighting for what’s needed, often time isn’t spent on their child to make them feel like a successful learner.
Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation President Samantha Becotte agreed that more supports were needed when it came to supporting children in school.
“It just affirms what we’ve been talking about as teachers really for the last number of years. There are growing challenges in our schools and teachers are doing their best along with parents to try and support every child and the needs that they have, but there are fewer and fewer professional supports that are available in our schools,” Becotte said.
She said this was a direct result of the government underfunding schools.
When asked how well equipped teachers are to support a child who may be challenged with something like dyslexia, Becotte said it gets more and more difficult.
“It gets more and more difficult to meet those individual needs when you have a larger number of students in your class, and there aren’t any additional adults there with you.”
She said getting to work with kids one-on-one is getting more and more difficult, adding that children are also being placed on waitlists for up to two years to be assessed.
Becotte gave an example of a situation where these kinds of learning disabilities were being first discovered on a high school level.
“Some students through their own ability are able to kind of mask some of those needs all the way through their education, and some of those reading challenges are identified at a high school level.”
She wondered how much better off those kids would have been had those needs been identified at a younger age.
Becotte added that kids with only the most significant needs are being added to the waitlist, so some slip through the cracks.
Global News received a statement from the Ministry of Education.
“The Ministry of Education is aware of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission’s report and will need more time to review to examine connections to work and initiatives already underway,” read the statement.
It also highlighted current budget funding, saying that money “provides for classroom supports to ensure that all students have equal access to, and benefit from, the provincial education program in an inclusive education setting.”
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