If you’re a parent in Ontario and have ever tried to have your child held back a year in school, you know that’s basically impossible.
I should know: I’ve been trying to have my son held back a year since he was in junior kindergarten.
As a December baby, my son was three years and eight months when he started school, the minimum age to do so in Ontario.
If we lived south of the border, most states would require him to have been four by August or September in order to attend; otherwise, he would have started the following year, when he turned five.
In the United Kingdom, where my son was born, he would have started the year after he turned four.
I was told at the time that, yes, I had the option to hold him back a year and start him when he was already four but that he wouldn’t go to junior kindergarten — instead, he’d head straight to senior kindergarten.
So, no, it wasn’t really an option, because he would still have been the youngest in his senior kindergarten class: four, when most of his classmates were already five.
In response to newly released data, the Toronto District School Board in 2017 acknowledged this gap and told parents that kids born late in the year could wait an additional year before starting school.
That announcement came three years too late for my son.
At the time, the Globe and Mail noted that “kindergarten students born between October and December are more likely to have the lowest scores on a range of developmental assessments measuring language, social competence, physical health and emotional skills, TDSB figures show. Students born earlier in the year do much better.”
My son’s teachers have reminded me that kids eventually catch up and tsk-tsked me whenever I advocated to have him held back.
And then the pandemic hit.
The Ontario government closed schools for 20 weeks, longer than any other jurisdiction in Canada. Presumably, it did so to protect children, teachers, and education workers. But even now, as we navigate a world where COVID remains part of our day-to-day, education continues to suffer.
Staffing shortages are affecting what students learn and their experience in classrooms. How would you perform in school if you had multiple teachers in one school year? You develop a relationship with one, they’re absent due to illness, leave because of burnout, or retire — and then you have to do it all over again.
Much as we would like to be done with COVID, it is still very much not done with us. As cases rise in Ontario, experts say we’re likely headed for another triple-demic — COVID, RSV, and flu — which will put stress on our hospitals and force kids and staff out of class.
Children’s mental health has been affected. There has been a noted increase in emergency-department visits and hospitalization due to self-harm, and more kids are avoiding school. While school avoidance isn’t new, experts are saying it has become a crisis since the pandemic. In 2021, a study of schools in the GTA “revealed an alarming 600 per cent increase in extreme absenteeism — when students miss more than 50 per cent of classes.”
So what kinds of supports are available for kids and families?
While the government has introduced new mental-health modules this year so that students will “learn practical strategies to manage and reduce stress,” the Ontario Association of Social Workers is calling for more mental-health funding for schools.
One of the solutions the government offered to address learning loss was a $200 “catch up payment” for parents, $250 for those with disabled children. As tutoring costs can range from $120 to $700 a month per child, that payment, welcome as it was, seems like a drop in the bucket. Were parents consulted about what supports their children needed? Would it have been better if that money had gone directly to schools to help address learning gaps?
“We understand … that parents must be fully involved and fully aware of what's happening in the life of their children,” said Education Minister Stephen Lecce at a press conference this past August.
This was in response to the question of whether Ontario would follow New Brunswick and Saskatchewan’s lead and introduce policies requiring that parents be informed if their children change their gender identity at school.
If the minister believes that parents should be “fully involved” and “fully aware of what’s happening in the life of their children,” why aren’t parents given the choice to hold back their child if they know that their child isn’t ready to move forward in their academic year? Why isn’t the ministry considering an additional year in both elementary and high schools for those students who are struggling and have fallen behind? What is the point of moving students through the grades when they haven’t learned what they needed to in order to move to the next grade? Yes, children have a right to an education, but don’t they also have the right to a quality education?
In effect, we’re lying to our children, saying they are ready to move forward and have achieved something they haven’t. Moving forward for the sake of moving forward doesn’t address the knowledge that hasn’t been learned — it only delays the inevitable moment of reckoning. Why are we lowering the bar when futures are at risk?
In a few weeks, my first-born child will turn 13. Next year, he’s expected to begin high school.
He’s currently testing at a Grade 6 level. I worry that, if we don’t have these difficult discussions, I am failing my child. If we can’t have him held back, we will find a way to move forward as a family. We’ll have to.
He of course wants to go because he wants to be with his friends. But, as proud as I would be if he skipped a grade, I would be equally proud if he were held back.
Kids may be resilient, but they’re facing crises that have nothing to do with their capabilities — crises caused or exacerbated by the decisions the grownups in the room have been making since the onset of the pandemic. A child being held back should be the least of our concerns, and adults should stop putting their heads in the sand. Surprisingly, that hasn’t made things better.
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