The Ford government says a plan to give students a portion of their grade for showing up to class was suggested by teachers who are struggling to manage classrooms, where a growing number of kids are skipping lessons.
As part of new legislation, Education Minister Paul Calandra unveiled plans Monday to make attendance part of final marks for students in Grades 10, 11 and 12.
The change would make participating and attending class worth 15 per cent of the final score in Grade 9 and Grade 10, as well as being worth 10 per cent for Grades 11 and 12. The province will also move to mandatory written exams.
Calandra said the idea came from teachers he had spoken to since taking over as education minister a year ago.
“It is an idea that came exclusively from my engagement with teachers; it wasn’t on my radar at all,” he said.
“I have to be honest with you, when I took over the position, I actually still thought exams were happening all over the place, I actually still thought attendance was part of the mark, and then I realized that for many, many years it had been taken out.”
Get breaking National news
Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won’t miss a trending story.
The minister said courses without participation didn’t create an incentive for students to be in class.
“One hundred per cent of their mark is based on coursework, so students can pop in and out as they like and their mark was not impacted at all,” he said on Tuesday.
“And at the same time, some kids were working really, really hard and there was no way to acknowledge their hard work as part of their marks.”
The government hasn’t provided the exact figures for absenteeism, but said it has grown since the pandemic.
Malin Leahy, a vice-president for the Ontario Secondary Teachers’ Federation, said the policy was “low-hanging fruit” that failed to address the core issues in classrooms.
“I would rather that the government funded the system properly so that we wouldn’t be seeing these gaps in attendance at all,” she told Global News, pointing out issues outside a student’s control, like transport, could impact attendance.
“This is a very small percentage of students, I would imagine,” she added. “Most of our students show up to school every day because, one, they want to learn. They show up to school because they feel safe … They’re not showing up to school because they’re being punished for not attending. And I think that this is the piece that’s missing from the minister’s announcement today.”
Ontario Liberal interim leader John Fraser echoed the concern, suggesting that children not feeling safe or supported in classrooms was behind a trend of increasing absenteeism.
“If your school is not a welcoming environment, if your class is too big, if you’re not getting the attention you need, if you have a special need, if school is not working for you because you don’t feel welcome, why are you gonna go?” he asked.
Asked why he had chosen the carrot of marks for attending rather than the stick of punishing those who don’t turn up, Calandra said the entire policy was based on what he’d heard from teachers.
“I think our teachers are professionals and they understand what they need and what their students need to achieve,” he said.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
