One Giant Leap Forward                               

The Journey to Ontario's New Policy on Parent Involvement

By Gord Kerr, M. Ed.

Consider what has happened in Ontario over the last 18 months.  Not too long ago, people were openly questioning whether school councils were on there way out. 

But so much has happened in the last 18 months.  Ontario’s education system has experienced the rare kind of leadership that listens and brings people together to focus on improving opportunities for students to succeed.  Things are certainly not perfect, but we’re better off than we were 18 months ago.  Over that time, school councils and the role of parents within the system have benefited from a new policy on parent involvement and new kinds of support that will ultimately help our children do better.    

Embedding the role of parents formally within Ministry policy represents a small step in advancing Ontario’s education system.  What makes this a giant leap forward is the expanded definition and understanding of the kinds of parent involvement that can help children learn and the funding to assist Ontario’s school boards and school councils reach out to engage parents.

Let’s take a brief look back at the journey that led to Ontario’s new policy on parent involvement.  In 1994, the Royal Commission on Learning recommended the creation of school community councils, to “build community support for student learning” and “enhance the primary role of parents in the education, growth and development of their children.” 

In 1995, Policy Program Memorandum 122 created the school council system.  It was a step forward as it established a formal mechanism for dialogue in every school in Ontario.  That was something that did not exist until then.  However, PPM 122 was vague in many ways and did not clearly define the kinds of parent involvement that can help children succeed.  There were many disagreements about what school councils should be doing and some of those disagreements continue today.  Many people were led to believe that participation on a school council was the ‘preferred’ kind of involvement, and that the job of every school council was to engage more parents on the school council.  The truth is, there are so many other ways for parents to support their children which the new policy recognizes but PPM 122 did not mention.

In 1998, the Education Improvement Commission undertook a province wide consultation and provided a series of recommendations in The Road Ahead III.  It provided an accurate and forward looking vision of what school councils could be, but few of the recommendations were adopted by the government of the day.   

In 2000, the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education at the time conducted another provincial consultation and then later in the year, Regulations 612 and 613 successfully clarified many of the role and structural issues surrounding school councils.  However, the regulations did not provide guidance to school councils about the many kinds of parent involvement that should be stimulated to help children succeed or provide guidance to school councils on how to engage other parents within the school community.

In the fall of 2004, Ontario’s former Minister of Education, Gerard Kennedy, asked his Parliamentary Assistant, Kathleen Wynne to bring together a group of parents to formulate recommendations on how to strengthen the voice of parents within the province. 

People asked if it would be different this time.   After all, this is the third time that parents were asked many of the same questions.  But this time, it was different ... what made the difference?  

Here are a couple names to remember.  The first is Kathleen Wynne, MPP and Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education.  Kathleen assembled the Parent Voice in Education team and ensured that the process and the recommendations were parent driven.   The second is former Minister of Education, Gerard Kennedy.  Kennedy listened to the voices of parents from across Ontario as expressed through the small group of 20 on the Parent Voice in Education Project and boldly responded with a new policy and funding to back it up.  

The 20 people who participated on the Parent Voice in Education project also played a significant role in making it different this time.  They were a very diverse group of people who found a way to create new and relevant recommendations out of the consultation process and their own substantial collective experience. 

There is still much work to be done to bring this new policy on parent involvement to life, to advance the capacity of the school council system and to engage parents further in ways that help children learn.  But we’ve reached a tipping point, and taken a giant leap forward. 

This time, there’s no turning back.