What Actually Changed in Ontario Schools This September: A Parent's Checklist

Where this list comes from

Most of these changes trace to one law and one policy. The law is Bill 101, the Putting Student Achievement First Act, 2026, which received Royal Assent on 7 May 2026 and gave the Minister of Education the power to set assessment policy for every board. The policy is the September 2026 update to Growing Success, the province's assessment and reporting rulebook, on a ministry page last updated 21 August 2026. The government releases listed at the end fill in the rest: Edwin on 22 June, the new schools on 20 August, and the support offices ordered in November 2025 and launched on 1 September.

The ministry's own back-to-basics page sums up the year in two bullets: schools are getting "mandatory written exams in Grades 9 to 12" and "attendance and participation accounting for 15% of final marks for Grades 9 and 10 and 10% for Grades 11 and 12". Everything else here is either a support for that, or a separate change that landed in the same school year.

High school marks follow one formula now

One formula, two versions. For a Grade 9 or 10 course the final mark is 65% classroom work, 20% final evaluation and 15% attendance and participation. For Grades 11 and 12 it is 65%, 25% and 10%. Most subjects end with a written exam in a designated exam period. An excused absence does not lower the mark, but the ministry's five-level rubric scores attendance and participation together, so a child who is present every day and never contributes can still lose marks on it. In Grade 9 math the EQAO assessment stands in for the written exam and "will be weighted for 20% of the final mark".

That is the change parents have heard most about, and it deserves its own page. It is also the most argued about: the secondary teachers' federation, a Wilfrid Laurier University education researcher and the Ontario Human Rights Commission all raised objections to marking attendance, and the deep dive carries what they said. Ontario's new exam and attendance rules has the ministry's subject-by-subject exam tables, the full rubric, the exemption list and a worked example. The one thing to do this month is the same everywhere: ask the school how an absence gets recorded as excused, and how you can see the attendance record.

Student and Family Support Offices: a new place to take a problem

From 1 September every one of Ontario's 72 school boards has a Student and Family Support Office. The government describes the job in one sentence: the offices "review concerns raised by parents to help address matters that need to be escalated following initial engagement with a child's teacher and principal".

The order matters, and the office is the third step. CBC reported Education Minister Paul Calandra saying so at the Hamilton news conference: "Most of these can and should be resolved with the teacher or principal." Toronto District School Board asks families who have not yet spoken to the teacher or principal to do that first, and says its team "will make every effort to acknowledge your email within 48 hours and address your request within 5 business days".

The provincial standard behind that is written down: "acknowledging inquiries within two business days and aiming to provide an answer within five business days", in plain language that addresses the specific question. The offices ran first at boards under provincial supervision, eight of them by this September according to CBC's report of the minister's remarks, and the province reports "95 per cent of family inquiries acknowledged within two business days and nearly 90 per cent receiving a response within five business days or an estimated response date for more complex matters".

Each office is led by a supervisory officer, a senior board official, and the ministry will collect the concerns from all 72 boards to look for patterns. Finding yours takes a minute: "Parents can find contact information for the Student and Family Support Office on their local school board's main webpage."

Edwin: the $60 million platform, and what it means for your child

Edwin is a digital learning platform made by Nelson Education. In June the province committed $60 million so that, in the release's words, "Starting in September 2026, all teachers will have access to classroom resources through Nelson Education's Edwin platform, which covers Grades 1 to 12 subjects in both English and French and is already used in some Ontario school boards." Nelson was chosen as the Vendor of Record through a procurement run by Supply Ontario.

For most families Edwin changes nothing this year. It does not require any teacher to use it: CBC reported that the platform "will be provided to school boards as a resource option in the new school year, but teachers will not be required to use it", and the release says "Teachers can continue to use supplementary educational materials in their classrooms approved by their school board". It does not hand parents a login either. CBC reported that, in the minister's account, the data will show which students need support and "grant parents access to see how their child's performance compares to the class". Nothing in the release says so, or says when. If you want to know whether your child's class is using Edwin, ask the teacher.

Kindergarten has a new curriculum

The ministry's kindergarten page states: "The Ontario Curriculum, Kindergarten, 2026 will replace The Kindergarten Program, 2016. Starting in the 2026-27 school year, all kindergarten programs will be based on the expectations outlined in the 2026 curriculum policy." The back-to-basics page describes the new document as "focused on developing foundational skills in math and literacy".

The shape of the day does not change: a free two-year program for four- and five-year-olds, taught, in classrooms with more than 16 students, by a teacher and an early childhood educator together. For a parent, the practical difference this year is what the new expectations ask of a four- or five-year-old. The reporting side is still catching up: the ministry says the kindergarten addendum to its assessment policy "is currently being updated to align with the content, philosophy and intent of The Ontario Curriculum, Kindergarten, 2026".

The financial literacy graduation requirement

This one has a narrow audience, and a lot of the coverage misses it. The requirement applies to "students who entered Grade 9 in the 2025-26 school year and onwards", so this year's Grade 10 students are the first cohort. Students in Grades 11 and 12 today are not covered.

Inside the compulsory Grade 10 Career Studies course, students complete learning modules and assessment questions developed by TVO. They "will have to earn a mark of 70% or higher on the financial literacy modules", and that mark "will make up 5% of their final mark in Grade 10 Career Studies". They get "2 attempts during the Grade 10 course". A student who misses twice can re-attempt the modules the following semester outside the course, with school support, or complete a TVO equivalency set that becomes available in February 2027. A student who is unsuccessful in both the requirement and the course may need to retake Career Studies, which gives two fresh attempts, and an adjudication process exists for extenuating circumstances. Meeting the requirement is recorded on the Ontario Student Transcript.

Paper report cards are back

In June the ministry required boards to put report cards back on paper: "Starting in June 2026 and onwards, school boards are required to distribute paper report cards to students and parents." For Kindergarten to Grade 8, "end-of-term report cards will be sent home with students through homeroom teachers", and "Report cards that are not collected will be mailed to students' homes." Electronic copies stay where boards already offer them.

High schools are different: boards "may continue using current approaches to distributing report cards and provide a paper copy if requested". So if you want a paper copy for a teenager, ask. And if a report card level puzzles you, Ontario's report card levels explained is the page for that.

The test calendar for 2026-27

The Grade 9 math assessment is no longer a variable. From this school year it is worth a fixed 20% of the MTH1W course, and EQAO runs two windows: 12 January to 5 February 2027 and 8 to 30 June 2027. Schools choose when inside those windows. Our EQAO Grade 9 math practice quiz works through the five MTH1W strands with worked answers.

The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test runs from 3 November to 30 November 2026, with individual results reported by the end of January 2027. The spring sitting runs from 30 March to 19 April 2027. If your child is in Grade 10, the OSSLT explained and the OSSLT practice test are the two pages to read before November.

Grades 3 and 6 still write their EQAO assessments, and nothing about those changed this year. EQAO results explained still applies.

Cellphones: the rule is unchanged, the review is not finished

Nothing changed in the rule your child is under. Students in Grade 7 and above may not use a phone in class without their teacher's explicit permission, and the ministry page, updated 12 August 2026, says "Students Grade 6 and below may not use cellphones or other mobile devices at school during the school day without the permission of a teacher." Those rules have applied since 1 September 2024.

What is new is a review. In the spring the London Free Press reported that "The province launched a review of the cellphone policy for schools last month", a review that "would include a full ban on cellphones". A review is not a rule, and as of this month it has not become one. Our cellphone rules page tracks the difference.

New schools, a supplies fund, and Ontario Day

Thirty-five new or expanded schools open this September, "opening 18,300 new student spaces and 1,130 licensed child care spaces this fall" through "an investment of over $1 billion". Whether that touches your family depends on your postal code, so ask your board whether your school is one of them.

One smaller item reaches every elementary classroom. Since March, homeroom teachers have had "$750 per year in protected funding to buy classroom supplies they would normally have to pay for out of pocket". It does not change what the school asks you to buy. It changes what the teacher no longer has to.

Public schools also observe Ontario Day each year from 2026, on 1 June, or on the Friday before if 1 June falls on a weekend. It is an observance, not a day off: EQAO's own rules describe 1 June as "a day of instruction to celebrate Ontario Day", and no EQAO assessment may be scheduled on it.

What did not change

Plenty. The diploma still needs the same credit count and the same literacy test it always did, and the financial literacy requirement above is the year's only addition to it. Nothing on the ministry's list touches the four report card levels or the Grade 3 and Grade 6 EQAO assessments. The Grade 1 to 8 math and science documents are still the 2020 and 2022 editions, so Grade 8 math is what it was. Class size rules did not move, which matters because, as our page on Ontario's class sizes sets out, the law caps an individual class only where a Grade 1 to 3 pupil sits in it. And the rules on AI in schoolwork are still whatever your board and teacher say they are, because nobody in Ontario has issued a provincial one.

What to ask the school this month

• How does the school record an excused absence, and how can I see my child's attendance record?
• Is my child's class using Edwin, and will I be able to see anything from it?
• Where is our board's Student and Family Support Office, and what is its response standard?
• For a Grade 10 student: when do the financial literacy modules run?
• For a Grade 9 student: which EQAO window will the school use?
• For a kindergarten child: how will the new curriculum show up on the communication of learning?

If a parent-teacher interview is coming, our ten-minute interview questions pair well with these.

Where a certified teacher fits

Several of this year's changes turn a soft expectation into a fixed weight or a fixed date: 25% of a senior English, math or science mark on one exam, 20% of Grade 9 math on one EQAO sitting, the OSSLT in a November window. Those are the parts of a school year that can be planned for.

A certified teacher does not only teach the coursework. They can chart which courses a student needs to reach a target program, then focus the teaching on the subject areas that get them there. With exam weights now fixed, that plan includes when each exam falls and what it is worth. Which senior math course a student takes was already a consequential decision; Ontario's senior math streams walks through it.

Genie works only with Canadian Certified Teachers, licensed by a provincial governing body such as the Ontario College of Teachers. Certification is verified before a teacher ever sees a student profile: the certificate number and issuing body are checked against the provincial registry, with a live government-ID match. Genie calls this the Trust Engine. Matching is by course, pace and personality, and parents get a per-lesson record of what was covered and what the child understood. Genie's about page covers the certification standard, how matching works and the per-lesson reports.

Nobody can promise you a final mark. What a certified teacher can do is prepare a student for the fixed parts of this year, instead of meeting them for the first time on the day.