Educational streaming involves dividing students into differentiated groups based on their perceived academic ability and/or prior achievement. While most provinces initiate this process in Grade 10 as post-secondary preparation, Ontario is the only province that does so as students enter Grade 9.
This practice produces harmful and disadvantageous consequences not only for individual students, but for education systems more broadly, argue Tianna Follwell and Sam Andrey in this policy paper for Ontario 360. Titled How to End Streaming in Ontario Schools, they highlight the need to end this practice and offer up several recommendations the province should implement as it addresses the issue.
Examining the effects of streaming, the authors find that:
“Students streamed into non-academic courses experience depressed achievement, delayed graduation, and increased rates of drop-out. Stigma associated with applied placement has been shown to negatively affect students’ self-perception and academic performance. Students in Ontario with comparable past academic achievement perform significantly better in academic over applied courses.”
These findings correspond to international studies as well. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recommends the delay of stratification in education until “upper-secondary,” as research has shown little to no benefit for “high-achieving” students, while all students benefit from classes of mixed strengths and interests and high expectations.
For Ontario, the authors recommend that the province should:
1. Expand de-streaming to all core Grade 9 and 10 students with oversight from a de-streaming taskforce.
2. Accelerate provincial student identity data collection and reporting.
3. Improve educator training to equip them with the necessary tools to effectively lead classrooms of diverse learners.
4. Invest in staffing schools and creating programs for success.
