Inside the return of the mandatory final exam in Ontario: Why educators and experts are divided

While being touted as a way to provide consistency, prepare students for post-secondary and something experts say can also help address grade inflation and ensure students are learning — and not relying on AI — detractors say it takes away from teachers’ discretion because exams don’t work for all classes, or for all students.

Teacher unions have further questioned the government’s decision to use the standardized provincial EQAO math test in Grade 9 as the final exam for that credit, saying it is not the best barometer.

But for Calandra, “it has been the exact same thing: Bring back exams, bring back attendance, bring back participation, and we will deliver you a better student,” he said last week when asked about mandatory finals and attendance expectations that will be in place in September.

“We have spent a year talking with educators … what are their priorities,” he said, adding that a recurrent concern was “how do we ensure that what our students are learning is actually (what) they’re taking in and that the use of AI isn’t overpowering their final marks. The return to a final examination is something that came from directly from teachers.”

René Jansen in de Wal, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, said the government should have consulted.

Using the Grade 9 EQAO test “makes no sense whatsoever,” he added, when “all the research on standardized testing suggests it’s a better score of systemic inequities, like how big are the houses in the neighbourhood, what neighbourhoods don’t have the resources they need?”

How much exams will be worth

This fall, apart from the EQAO test, all exams are to take place during a designated period. For students in grades 9 and 10 taking arts, computer studies, phys-ed and tech, they will count for 10 per cent of the final mark, and a culminating project for another 10 per cent. In grades 11 and 12, those classes will have a final exam worth 10 per cent and a culminating project worth 15 per cent.

English, science and math exams will be worth 20 per cent in grades 9 and 10, and 25 per cent in grades 11 and 12.

Co-op and open courses are among the handful exempt from final exams, but will require a final project or presentation worth 20 per cent in grades 9 and 10, and 25 per cent in grades 11 and 12.

During the pandemic, exams were cancelled for most students, given online learning and then the slow return to school. Some boards had also started to move away from finals, preferring instead to rely on “culminating” or major end-of-year assessments.

Teachers in some areas pushed back, including in the Thames Valley District School Board, because “the concern with no exam is that it fails to prepare students for life after high school,” said John Bernans, District 11 president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. “We know that at college and university it is not unusual to have exams worth 50 per cent of the course, and even in trades, workers have to write tests and exams. 

“Students need practice for high-stakes exams in senior grades, and they need to practise for that in junior grades. Research also suggests that the process of course review and writing of final exams helps students retain information for the future.”

However, he added, teachers “would prefer to use their professional judgment to determine the nature of the final evaluation … Overall, this announcement is of interest, but not a huge change. The bigger issues are class sizes, cancelled programs, student behaviour and violence and a lack of supports for students.”

For classes that don’t seem to fit with finals, for things such as tech, “students might be required to learn about environmental issues in the industry, or to demonstrate they know how to do certain kinds of project planning,” said Kelly Gallagher-Mackay of Wilfrid Laurier University. “Physical and health education includes health knowledge. You certainly can test these types of knowledge with a written test.

“An exam, however, is probably not a good tool to assess what students have learned to ‘do’ in some of these courses, so it would only be able to address limited parts of the curriculum,” she added. “Some students may have chosen tech or art courses because they have test anxiety — this may be a barrier for some of them.”

Sarah Barrett, associate dean of York University’s faculty of education, said her question about the use of EQAO is “why this will still be a test in Grade 9. It is a delicate time for most students, just arriving in high school. Students are required to take math up to Grade 10. Why not postpone it to the end of Grade 10?”

Should teachers be making decisions on exams?

The change also raises questions about educators’ ability to make the best decisions for their students, because “in the instances where an exam meets the demands of that class, meets the needs of the students, there ought to be a final exam, and in instances where it doesn’t, then there shouldn’t be — and that’s where the teacher is well-positioned,” said Colin Matthew, vice-president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation.

“It’s an infringement on our professional judgment, because we know what we are doing, we know how to assess,” added Erin Roy, president of the local Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation District 9 in Greater Essex.

Christopher DeLuca, of Queen’s University’s faculty of education, said with the emphasis on exams, assessment quality is even more important and teacher education programs will need to emphasize it.

The new provincial policy, while bringing consistency, he added, “might actually narrow the kinds of assessments that are happening in those courses and may not reflect the full range of curriculum expectations that are being taught and learned” — though he noted that apart from Grade 9 math, teachers will still be creating and grading the tests, which gives them some latitude, and course work itself is worth the majority of any final mark.

As for using EQAO, “the concern that is being raised is students respond differently to examinations … some students thrive in exam-based contexts, and others that do not thrive, their anxiety increases,” he noted. “So if one of the stated goals of this new policy is to support student well-being, we have to ask whether or not increasing our emphasis and the consequences of a standardized test or standards-based test is going to serve that goal.”

Correction – July 6, 2026

This article was updated from a previous version to note that John Bernans is the OSSTF District 11 president, not District 12, representing Thames Valley District School Board.