{"id":962355,"date":"2026-11-08T00:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T00:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/962355\/"},"modified":"2026-11-08T00:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T00:06:16","slug":"we-need-to-get-serious-about-canadas-truancy-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/962355\/","title":{"rendered":"We need to get serious about Canada\u2019s truancy crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Empty<\/a> There may be plenty of things wrong with Canada’s schools, but none of them can be fixed if students don’t start their day sitting in a classroom. (Global Stock\/Getty Images) <\/p>\n

Of all the skills required to graduate high school, showing up on time ought to be the easiest. The current standard for Ontario students is that they attend at least 90 per cent of their assigned school days. Yet in 2024-25, nearly 60 per cent of Ontario’s high school students failed this basic requirement. Other provinces display similarly worrisome attendance figures. Canada is in the midst of a truancy epidemic. <\/p>\n

To reverse the trend, Ontario education minister Paul Calandra wants Ontario high school students to face clear consequences for skipping class. Starting with the current school year, up to 15 per cent of a high-schooler’s final mark will now be tied to attendance and class participation. To earn a top mark of “Level 4,” a student must limit their “unexcused absences” to two or fewer per semester. “For years classroom participation didn’t count. Students could drift in and out and still pass,” declares a short video<\/a> Calandra released to promote his new policy. “That ends now.” <\/p>\n

Calandra has solid evidence to support his tough talk. Earlier this year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a report<\/a> looking at attendance policies and outcomes across 45 education systems around the world. The top-level conclusion: not going to class can have a substantial impact on grades and future employment prospects. <\/p>\n

Students who admitted<\/a> to skipping one day in the previous two weeks scored 36 points below the average result of 472 in the OECD’s most recent international PISA math test for 15-year-olds. Those who missed five or more days underperformed by 72 points. Attendance is also linked to other important markers of long-term success, including executive function, motivation and perseverance. <\/p>\n

Troublingly, Canada was among several countries identified by the OECD as having “consistently increasing trends” for absenteeism. Among high school kids with university-educated parents we have the highest share of truancy across the entire OECD dataset. Even in families where the value of an education presumably is clearly recognized and well rewarded, there’s an apparent lack of interest in getting kids to go to class. <\/p>\n

Given the size and significance of the crisis, it might have been expected Calandra’s efforts to correct the situation would have earned him universal praise. This being Ontario’s highly partisan and deeply polarized education system, however, he has instead faced relentless criticism. <\/p>\n

The loudest complaints have come from progressive academics and teachers’ unions, who tend to abhor any talk about personal responsibility and claim the only solution to every problem is bigger education budgets. Because sports competitions often occur during classroom hours many parents are worried the new attendance policy will hinder their kids’ budding athletic careers. Even traditionalist education reformers seemed disappointed by Calandra’s move since his new focus on attendance distracts from the many other problems they want fixed, such as opaque marking standards, no-fail guarantees, lack of school choice and the rise of violence in the classroom. <\/p>\n

Everybody, it seems, is upset with the new plan. <\/p>\n

Some criticisms are apt. Better attendance on its own certainly won’t fix all that ails Canada’s education system. Plus, the rollout should have included sensible rules for sports and other extracurricular activities from the outset. Yet even these valid complaints miss the bigger picture. <\/p>\n

Decades of progressive reforms have eroded the sense of personal accountability that used to lie at the core of expectations about attendance. The impact of COVID-19 has also played a role. Remote learning during the pandemic made showing up in person seem old-fashioned and unimportant. And as the traditionalists point out, without clear standards for discipline and achievement, attendance becomes optional. Why bother going to class if you know you’re going to pass anyway? <\/p>\n

All these factors have changed the social conventions surrounding attendance. Now schools are supposed to make students want to come to class. That is nonsense. And it needs to change. <\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks <\/p>\n

It should be every student’s job to come to school on time and ready to learn. This inclination must be ingrained and supported throughout society, including at home. Unfortunately, it appears many families now treat in-person schooling as optional or irrelevant. That Canada leads the world in absenteeism among children of university-educated parents should be cause for national alarm. <\/p>\n

Calandra deserves far more credit than he has received to date for attempting to change attitudes about attendance. Showing up for class is important. Online education will never be a substitute for interacting in real time in the real world with other human beings. <\/p>\n

There may be plenty of things wrong with Canada’s schools, but none of them can be fixed if students don’t start their day sitting in a classroom. Every province should be following Ontario’s lead and treating absenteeism as the emergency it truly is. <\/p>\n

Christina Park is a graduate student in the Master of Journalism program at the University of British Columbia. The original, longer version of this essay first appeared in C2CJournal.ca<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There may be plenty of things wrong with Canada’s schools, but none of them can be fixed if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":962356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[15261,45,161,49,48,46,133,1828,1829,74172,1830,1831,39783,8123,131,2519,968,1705,2511,1832,1833,176,74173,3322,74174],"class_list":["post-962355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-401k","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-financial-information","tag-investing","tag-investment-tools","tag-investor","tag-market-news","tag-mortgage","tag-mutual-funds","tag-personal-finance","tag-quote","tag-real-estate","tag-retirement","tag-stock","tag-stock-research","tag-stock-valuation","tag-stocks","tag-suze-orman","tag-tax","tag-track-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/962356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}