Achieving Excellence, Ensuring Equity, and Promoting Well-Being: Ontario's Renewed Vision for Education

• In Event: 72.011 - The Atlantic Rim Collaboratory: An Emergent Movement for Global Educational Change

Abstract

Ontario’s renewed vision for education, Achieving Excellence, sets out bold and ambitious goals that are closely aligned with the vision of the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory (ARC). Ontario has set its sights on a comprehensive and continuous education system that supports children from birth to adulthood, recognizes well-being as an instrumental factor in students’ academic success, and promotes greater equity to ensure that all students can become personally successful, economically productive and actively engaged citizens. Ontario has also pledged to cultivate a high-quality teaching profession and strong leadership at all levels. As a founding member of ARC, Ontario supports the establishment of a global education network that advances equity, excellence, wellbeing, social justice, democracy and inclusion within high quality, professionally run education systems. Learning with and from other jurisdictions will help Ontario to deepen and broaden its ongoing system improvement efforts.
This session will highlight Ontario’s school and system improvement strategies (including successes, challenges and lessons learned) and how they have informed its renewed vision. Ontario has been recognized as a leading education jurisdiction with high levels of achievement and equity of outcomes (OECD, 2013, 2010), a strong performer, a successful reformer (Tucker, 2011), and a “great” education system showing sustained improvement (Mourshed et al., 2010). Over a decade (from 2003-2013), the Ministry of Education pursued three priority goals, improving student achievement, reducing gaps in performance, and increasing public confidence in publicly funded education, with considerable success. A key focus of the strategy was engaging educators in meaningful ways to build professional capital and leadership capacity (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). This session will illustrate how leadership capacity has been fostered at levels of the system through innovative initiatives such as Leading from the Middle and the Teacher Leadership and Learning Program. Yet, despite past successes, some schools and some students continue to struggle, especially indigenous students and those with special needs. Much more remains to be done to engage all families and communities and to build collaborative leadership and professionalism. In 2013, the Ministry engaged in an extensive consultation with a wide range of stakeholders including students, families, educators, professional organizations, researchers, community and business leaders to create a renewed vision for education. This vision is of “an education system characterized by high expectations and success for all,” one that is “responsive, high quality, accessible and integrated from early learning and child care to adult education” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014).
In the context of the establishment of the ARC and AERA’s theme of “Knowledge to Action: Achieving the Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity,” this symposium is very timely. Ontario’s progress demonstrates how ambitious goals are achievable through working together with common purpose, creating a guiding coalition at the top, improving classroom practice and school effectiveness, building professional capital, engaging students and families, and becoming more research-informed and evidence-based. Ontario is committed to ongoing collaborative, continuous learning among educators, school, and system leaders across global jurisdictions to ensure all children are prepared for success in a rapidly changing world.

Author

• Doris McWhorter, Ministry of Education