Ontario parents express concern about education as school ends for the summer | Globalnews.ca

After more than two years of school disruptions during the COVID pandemic, Jessie Lamontagne of Toronto called her nine-year-old son’s third grade “terrific” because he spent most of his time in the classroom, not online.

However, Lamontagne was quick to add that his son and his peers have a lot of catching up to do.

“Aside from gifted kids, who can naturally thrive without support, I think most of their peer group is behind when it comes to reading and writing. That kind of literacy is now going to snowball because once you get past grade 3, you’re no longer learning to read, you’re reading to learn,” she said.

Lamontagne is looking at several options to supplement her son’s learning this summer, although she does not plan to include summer school.

“Most people don’t want to send their kids to summer school. They want them to really have in school, during the school year, the education that they need to be able to be successful, to be successful in their life,” she said.

Like Lamontagne, many families in Ontario are concerned that children have fallen behind academically during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“My oldest son did quite well. He adapted, but his learning style, he can be very independently focused and driven, very self-directed…my other two kids didn’t do well with remote learning. The youngest, actually, I think he went online three times or so in a total of two months. He hated it. It wasn’t for him,” said Romana Siddiqui, a mother of three.

Siddiqui is also part of the Ontario Parents Action Network and is calling on the provincial government to reduce class sizes in the fall, among other actions.

“If we could take some of those funds and additional funds and put them into smaller class sizes and have more teachers, assistants and other types of paraprofessionals within the classroom, behavioral therapists, depending on the case and the situation. can be. Speech therapists, evaluations of children with IEPs who have additional support in schools, I think that would have been a more comprehensive approach and would have addressed the needs in a more systematic way,” she said.

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In February, the Ontario government released the Learning Recovery Action Plan, which was a five-point plan to strengthen learning recovery in reading and mathematics, following two years of global learning disruption caused by the COVID pandemic. -19.

“The way we are going to help strengthen learning and get these kids back on track is, in part, through the largest publicly funded free tutoring program, $175 million that was offered this spring, will be offered in the summer, in the fall, after school, on the weekends and of course summer programs for small group tutoring,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce told Global News on Thursday.

“We’ve also expanded TVO and TFO for one-on-one mentoring of little people, which is done virtually and in person, of course, as a $375 million program…and the final component for our little kids…is a program of The $25 million program we announced for early reading intervention where we can assess a child’s ability to read and then create supports for them and staff supports to help them get back on track,” added Lecce.

Siddiqui called the province’s mentoring program a “band-aid solution” to what she called a “deeper, more systemic problem.”

“Would you tell a parent ‘don’t take advantage of this?’ Not absolutely not. Do I think it is the right long-term solution? No,” she said.

Annie Kidder of People for Education said she is not surprised that children have fallen behind in their studies and hopes that individual assessments will be carried out to find out where each child is.

“All children are different, so some of them will have missed out on some kind of vital skill development, perhaps in reading,” he said.

Kidder noted that students have also suffered emotional loss.

“We have to look at the other things that have been lost, the experiences, the relationships between teachers and students and each other,” he said. “All of us collectively have been through great trauma and that’s what we need to acknowledge for children.”