Only 40 per cent of high school students met the provincial attendance threshold last year
Earlier this week, the provincial government proposed making attendance and participation worth up to 15 per cent of final grades
A strikingly low percentage of Ontario high school students met the provincial attendance threshold during the 2024-2025 school year, according to government data published by CTV News. Just 40.2 per cent attended 90 per cent of their classes.
While younger high-schoolers had slightly better attendance records, only 33.3 per cent of students enrolled in grade 12 met the threshold, and 38.7 per cent of students in grade 11, according to the government data, which was published days after Education Minister Paul Calandra introduced new legislation to significantly change school board governance.
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The Putting Student Achievement First Act, tabled this week, also proposes making attendance and participation worth up to 15 per cent of final grades for high school students.
“The reality is that since 100 per cent of their mark is based on coursework, they actually don’t have to come to class, right? There’s no consequence for them coming to school or not,” Calandra said.
“They choose not to come, and a lot of educators said it’s unfair for those students who are there every single day, they work really hard, they participate. This kind of levels the playing field. It’ll get them back into school, because there has to be consequences for not attending. There has to be consequences for bad behaviour.”
Speaking with CTV, Liberal education critic John Fraser said assigning grades for attendance is an inadequate remedy.
“Their answer is, you know what? The easiest thing to do is, we can penalize kids. We don’t know why they’re doing it, but we’ll just penalize,” Fraser said. “I think the government’s failing the kids, and maybe they don’t want that answer because class size is too big.”
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
