Liberals would bring Grade 13 back
Extra year an option to make up for lost class time during pandemic
Grade 13 could be making a comeback, for a limited time.
Students who feel the need to catch up after missing months of in-class learning throughout the pandemic would be able to opt for an extra final year of high school under a $295-million plan unveiled Friday by Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca in the June 2 election campaign.
The proposal is geared to students who don’t feel ready for higher learning and is intended to be more than the “victory lap” some teens do to boost their marks or get extra credits, Del Duca said Friday.
“A lot of our kids have fallen backwards,” he told reporters at a skateboard park beside a west-end high school.
“For those kids who need the time, and who need the extra instruction and the extra attention before they go off to college or university, take up a trade or their future career, I want to make sure there’s an opportunity for them to get support in a structured way.”
The extra grade, with a wider course selection that is yet to be decided, would be offered for four years and then re-evaluated to determine if it should continue, said Del Duca, who is trailing Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford in the polls.
According to The Signal, the Star’s provincial election forecast tool based on various polls, the PCs have 36.5 per cent support, followed by the Liberals at 27.6, New Democrats with 24.5 per cent and the Greens at 5.7 per cent.
The Liberal promise comes after Ontario students endured the longest periods of online-only classes in North America because of strict public health measures here.
In fact, teens finishing Grade 11 across the province next month have not yet had an uninterrupted year of high school.
One Grade 9 student watching Del Duca’s announcement while out for a run gave it the thumbs up after her own experience with repeated periods of learning at home over the last three academic years.
“I feel like Grade 13 would be like closure for me to get a full, normal four years,” said Tessa Jagiellowicz of Resurrection Secondary School, crossing her fingers.
After many years of debate, Ontario ended a fifth year of high school in 2003 because it was the only jurisdiction in North America providing one.
Ford, a Grade 13 graduate himself, did not address Del Duca’s proposal directly when asked about it at a campaign stop in Bowmanville, but slammed the previous Liberal government. “When I took office, 50 per cent of students were failing math. They were failing the students, they closed 600 schools and they had triple the amount of backlogged repairs,” Ford added. “We’re building schools.”
In Burlington, New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath mistakenly blamed the Liberals for axing Grade 13 after they took power in 2003.
It was the previous PC governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves from 1995 to 2003 that made and followed through on the decision — which had been recommended to the preceding NDP government of Bob Rae by the Royal Commission on Learning.
“It’s interesting that the Liberals are trying to fix something they broke in the first place,” Horwath claimed.
The royal commission’s report in January 1995 found “no evidence” that Grade 13 provided “superior performance in university as compared to students who spend only four years in secondary school.”
A number of studies have pointed to the phenomenon of “learning loss” in the pandemic, with the Toronto District School Board, for example, finding sharp drops in reading levels. In February, Education Minister Stephen Lecce earmarked an extra $35 million for student supports.
Del Duca referred to the challenges faced by his own two girls, one in elementary school, the other now in high school, since the pandemic began in March 2020.
“I have watched with pain as our daughters struggled with remote learning and lockdowns that set them back both academically and socially,” he said.
A return to Grade 13 would mark one of the biggest changes to the school system in two decades and is one of several new planks in the Liberal education platform released Friday.
It includes hiring 1,000 more mental-health professionals for students and staff, hiring another 5,000 special-education workers to reduce wait times for students with autism, expanding the student nutrition program to provide free “Ontario-grown” breakfasts to kids who need them, and replacing EQAO testing with a new assessment strategy.
“We will work with parents, teachers and education experts to develop it,” a Liberal source told the Star.
Del Duca has already proposed building 200 new schools and repairing or upgrading 4,500 others, and a firm cap of 20 students per class in all grades, a move that would require the hiring of 10,000 more teachers but has raised concerns about more split-grade classes and whether enough educators can be found in the current shortage.
He said the $10 billion to be saved by killing Ford’s plan to build Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass off Highway 400 would go toward improving public education.
Under the Grade 13 proposal, school boards would get full funding for every student and the province would “pause” the current policy of reducing funding for students taking a “victory lap” after earning the 34 credits now required for graduation. New courses for Grade 13 would include personal finances, civics, mental health and well-being. Del Duca said others would be developed in consultation with educators and conceded it would be “a little bit difficult” get the extra year in place in time for school next September.