ETFO demands province fix outdated education funding formula

Today’s fall economic statement is yet another failure by the Ford government. Behind the rhetoric, there are no meaningful new investments in public education. While educators struggle with large class sizes, increasing workloads, and rising violence in schools, the Ford government remains incomprehensibly focused on rewarding well-connected conservative party donors.

“Once again, student well-being and achievement are sacrificed to benefit Conservative insiders,” says ETFO President David Mastin. “The education funding formula, last fully reviewed over 20 years ago, has systematically failed elementary students and schools. For nearly three decades, special education, programs for English language learners, supports for student mental health, and school operations and maintenance have been chronically underfunded. This is deliberate neglect, mismanagement, and a direct attack on children’s right to a strong public education.”

In 2017, ETFO released seven recommendations to fix Ontario’s education funding formula based on economist Hugh Mackenzie’s research report, Shortchanging Ontario’s Students: An Overview and Assessment of Education Funding in Ontario. The province has ignored every one of the Federation’s recommendations:

ETFO 2017 Recommendation	Current Status
Increase special education funding to support students with exceptionalities and mental health needs	Inadequate funding. Special education remains chronically underfunded. Boards routinely report that they lack sufficient resources to meet students’ needs.
Conduct an independent review of the special education funding model	Not done. No independent review has been carried out.
Amend the formula to expand access to frontline services (counsellors, psychologists, social workers, etc.)	Not achieved. Funding for front-line supports remains inadequate; staffing levels are far below student needs.
Cap average class size in grades 4–8 at 22 students	Not in place. Regulation requires a 24.5 class size average, with no hard cap for individual classes.
Reduce Kindergarten class sizes with firm caps	No reduction. Regulation requires an average of 26, with a hard cap of 29. Up to 10 per cent of classes can go as high as 32 in certain circumstances.
Close the $612 per-pupil funding gap between elementary and secondary students	Gap persists. The funding gap between elementary and secondary students persists.
Mandate a comprehensive review of the funding formula every five years	Not done every five years. After the scathing Rozanski report in 2002, the government abandoned its commitment to review the formula every five years.

Since the formula’s introduction, funding for special education has shifted from needs-based bottom-up funding to formula-based funding with no direct link to individual students’ needs. This has had profound implications for students, educators, special education staff, and administrators, as reported in Promises Unfulfilled: Addressing the Special Education Crisis in Ontario.

“Ontario’s broken funding formula is a key reason educators and school boards face constant challenges,” says Mastin. “The provincial government refuses to take accountability for decades of underfunding. Instead, they blame trustees, who are forced to balance budgets that can never meet student needs. The math is simple: a flawed formula based on outdated data, combined with rising inflation, equals decades of underfunding and harm to students. This is not the thriving public education system every child deserves.”

It is well past time for the Ford government to stop deflecting and start fixing. Ontario students deserve a funding formula that actually meets their needs, not one that sets them up to fail.

To find out how much funding has been cut to individual schools across Ontario, use ETFO’s new searchable tool on BuildingBetterSchools.ca.