Education spending may have gone up, but it is increasing at a much slower rate than in past years and per-student funding is decreasing when inflation is factored in, says a new report from the province’s financial watchdog.
“In an inflation-adjusted basis (i.e., real 2026-27 dollars), provincial operating funding to school boards was $15,140 per student in 2025-26, the second lowest level over the last 10 years, after 2024-25,” says the report released Wednesday by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, or FAO.
“… the FAO estimates that real provincial operating funding to school boards will decrease to $15,074 per student in 2026-27, $14,850 per student in 2027‑28 and $14,775 per student in 2028-29.”
Overall, education funding sat at $42.7 billion in 2025-6 and will rise to $43.4 in 2028-29, the report says, representing a 0.6 per cent increase and a “significantly slower pace than the 5.6 per cent average annual growth” from 2022-23 to 2025-26.
The post-secondary envelope, which includes some revenue from colleges, sat at $13.6 billion in 2025-26 and will decrease to $12.7 billion in 2028-9.
The government says FAO reports are a “snapshot” in time and that public accounts, to be released Thursday, will provide the full picture.
“Funding for Ontario’s colleges and universities is higher than it’s ever been in our province’s history,” and in February the government injected $6.4 billion into the system over four years, said Bianca Giacoboni, press secretary to Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn.
Emma Testani, spokesperson for Education Minister Paul Calandra, said that when it comes to elementary and secondary education, the government is making “record investments” and the FAO report “does not reflect the future cost of teachers’ salaries, which account for over 80 per cent of education spending.
“As we work towards a negotiated agreement, those increases will be reflected in future spending.”
(Teachers and support staff have been without contracts since the end of August, and are currently awaiting labour board rulings before negotiations can begin in earnest.)
For interim Liberal leader John Fraser, the report indicates that under Premier Doug Ford, “the things that people count on, well, he’s letting wither, and that’s just simply wrong. If you look at post-secondary education … it’s really going backwards.”
Fraser noted the report also found projected health-care spending will increase at half the average annual rate of the previous three years, making it harder to get a hospital or nursing home bed, a nurse or personal support worker.
New Democrat MPP Peggy Sattler, her party’s post-secondary critic, said “by 2028-29, the FAO estimates a $2.2 billion gap between what the government plans to spend and what’s needed to maintain current services.”
