Public education in Ontario’s cities, 2005

pdf 557 kb Published 2005

People for Education, 2005.

In a typical urban classroom, 13% of students have special needs, 12% need ESL support and as many as 36% come from low-income families; many students have a combination of these challenges.

The new provincial government has implemented a number of changes to education funding and policy to attempt to address some of the unique pressures faced by urban schools, but much of the funding is not reaching the students who need it most. Boards are using a substantial portion of this targeted funding to pay for overall costs such as teachers’ salaries and operating expenses.

All schools across the province have students needing a variety of supports, and all schools have qualities that make them unique. But in urban schools, because of the sheer number of students, the concentration of issues, the combination of needs and the impact of changes to government policy, the challenges are magnified.
In Ontario, 1.2 million students and 50% of schools are located in urban areas. In Ontario’s urban schools:

  • The proportion of the population that are new immigrants is more than five times higher than the rest of the province.
  • There is a greater proportion of children in low-income families than most other areas of the province.
  • As compared to non-urban areas, cities have more than double the number of residents who speak neither English nor French as their first language.