LEARNING TO SPEAK AND WRITE ENGLISH IS ESSENTIAL TO STUDENT SUCCESS

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Ministry of Education      Ministère de l’Éducation

   By  Kathleen Wynne

   Minister of Education

  As Ontario’s Minister of Education, I am keenly aware that

children need to master the English language in order to succeed

in our schools. I have heard criticism recently that implies the

Ontario government does not provide enough funding to School

Boards to provide English-as–a-Second-Language (ESL) training. The

comments concern me a great deal and I want to clarify our

commitment to the ESL program.

I am proud of our government’s record on ESL. Since we took

office, we increased ESL funding by 25 per cent, even though the

number of students generating ESL funding increased by only 4 per

cent. Ontario now spends over $226 million annually to support the

teaching of ESL in our schools.  This funding amount is based on

the number of ESL students in the school system, as identified by

school principals.  Furthermore, the Ontario government has taken

significant steps to ensure that all ESL funds allocated for ESL

are spent on students with ESL needs.

Our investments in our ESL students are showing positive results.

Results of the Grade 3 EQAO reading tests show that the number of

ESL students performing at or above the provincial standard has

improved from 25 per cent to 42 per cent in the first three years

of our mandate - that’s a gain of 17 percentage points.  Similarly

the number of Grade 6 ESL students performing at or above the

provincial standard in reading has improved from 24 per cent to 37

per cent - a gain of 13 percentage points in the first three years

of our mandate.

All our students deserve programs and resources that will help

them learn to their fullest.  As a government and as Minister of

Education, I am committed to seeing our students whose first

language is not English or French get the support they need to

reach their full potential.