Prime Minister Doug Ford’s throne speech on Tuesday promised $225 million in direct payments to parents “to help their children catch up,” but some aren’t sure that’s the right decision.
The pledge comes after more than two years of schooling disrupted by the pandemic has worsened the mental health and academic performance of Ontario students.
So far, Finance Minister Peter Betlenfalvi has not said what amounts parents could receive and whether they would be tied to tuition or means-tested. He said the money would come from budget contingencies.
Vanessa Vakharia, founder and CEO of Math Guru, which offers tutoring in Toronto, believes the measure will “directly benefit” her.
However, he thinks it’s a “pretty terrible idea.”
“I’m a little suspicious, seeing the continuous cuts being made in education,” Vaharia told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning. “I don’t think it’s fair at all to put the onus on parents to go out and supplement their children’s education.”
In March, the province’s Financial Accountability Office reported that the Ford government spent $5.5 billion less on education than it had planned in the first three quarters of the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
A direct cash transfer is not a solution, said Prachi Srivastava, associate professor of global education at Western University.
Srivastava told Metro Morning that research doesn’t show benefits from direct transfers unless they are “targeted specifically for education and … unless you’re in a context where you’re also supplementing or actually investing enough resources in the education budget.”
Take the promised $225 million and split it among the province’s children, and you get maybe $70 to $90 per child, she said — “really ridiculous.”
“We have to understand that we’re starting in Ontario in a place that’s a real outlier in Canada and actually in North America and Europe in terms of the number of weeks of school closures that we’ve had,” Srivastava said. “We really can’t take any measures that are ad hoc.”
Vakharia agreed, noting that while learning gaps are a problem, they are not the only problem.
“I think we’re kind of using them to cover up the fact that there’s a continuous decline in what kids are getting in schools,” she said.
“What we’ve seen is a real, social-emotional loss when it comes to education, real confidence issues, real anxiety issues in the classroom.”
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