Education Minister Says Ontario Teachers Need Better Training in Math

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Education Minister of Ontario, Liz Sandals, has stated in a recent news conference that Ontario needs to improve teacher training in math, which is a decision prompted by a recent revelation that standardized test results are showing students losing ground in the subject for the fifth year in a row. The provincial authority that administers annual tests, Education Quality and Accountability Office, has discovered that the number of Grade 3 and 6 students fulfilling the provincial standard in math have fell, regardless of the improving stats in reading and writing skills.

The Minister stated on Wednesday that “the academic background of a lot of our elementary teachers is more in the arts – they don’t necessarily have an extensive background themselves in math and science.” It was added that “the professional development of teachers actually matters here, because we’re actually seeing the results in areas where the teachers have a high comfort level and a lot of new training on pedagogy for literacy and writing skills. … We need to deal with math so that the teachers have the same comfort level with teaching math that they do with reading and writing.”

It was highlighted that math scores are decreasing all over the country. A report of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development revealed in 2009 that the performance of teaching math has decreased in six provinces, including Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia.