TORONTO – Ontario’s education ministry is recommending school boards freeze hiring ahead of the provincial budget and as the government consults on class sizes and hiring practices. Deputy minister Nancy Naylor sent boards a memo Thursday noting that the government implemented a hiring freeze in June and that...
TORONTO – The Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) is extremely alarmed by a government memo to school boards, recommending that boards stop hiring teachers and other staff, including hiring needed to fill vacancies for retirements and leaves, pending further announcements on education funding. “The memo...
Grade 8 students from Petrolia and Wyoming were shown a path to careers in the skilled trades on a recent visit to Sarnia union hall. The students from Holy Rosary Catholic School and St. Philip Catholic School spent a day visiting tech classrooms at St. Patrick’s...
Recently, Ontario’s Doug Ford government proposed regressive changes to post-secondary education that will burden students with more debt and reduce student unions’ capacity to organize and provide essential services to students. Students throughout Ontario and Canada know that the “Student Choice Initiative” is an attempt to...
Ontario school boards want more resources for students with severe disabilities after a significant change to the province’s autism program that they fear could bring children into classrooms full-time without proper supports. Families who have children in the program currently receive full funding for intensive therapy....
School boards are growing increasingly worried about the impact of the new autism system that could see children arriving in classrooms requiring services they say they don’t have the resources to provide. A number — including the Halton public board — are now writing letters of...
As Ontario budget consultations wrapped up Feb. 8, Liz Stuart questioned how much of a conversation really took place. Like many, the president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) has kept abreast of the consultations with the unsettling feeling that most of the big...
Doug Ford admonished protesting students for their “filthy” mouths on Tuesday after a group decrying cuts to post-secondary grants disrupted a session at Ontario’s legislature by shouting obscenities at the premier. A handful of student protesters seated in the public gallery interrupted legislators by shouting chants...
From organizing province-wide protests to talks of a student strike, student groups and unions are mobilizing in response to the changes to postsecondary education funding announced by the Ford government last month. The Varsity took a look into what student groups are doing to protest...
Changes to Ontario’s autism program are raising concerns that thousands of autistic children who will receive fewer hours of therapy will be pushed into schools unable to properly accommodate them. The government announced last week that in order to clear a backlog of 23,000 children waiting...