The vast majority of Ontario’s 2024 graduating class did not complete the Ford government’s mandatory e-learning requirements, data from the province’s Ministry of Education reveals. 

The 2023-24 graduating cohort was the first group to be subject to the province’s e-learning mandate. In effect since the 2020 school year, the mandate requires students to take two e-learning courses to graduate. 

CBC News obtained the data from Trillium reporter Tina Yazdani, who first broke the story. The ministry would not release the data to CBC News, saying it would need to file a separate FOI request to obtain it.

The data shows that among the 2023-24 graduating cohort, more than 104,000 students opted out or were exempt from the e-learning requirement, compared to just over 46,000 who completed it. 

Students are allowed to opt-out of the e-learning requirement with parental permission, if they are 18 years old or have withdrawn from parental consent to do so themselves, according to the Ontario government’s website. 

The data spans all public and Catholic schools. 

Numbers spark debate at Queen’s Park

Liberal MPP Rob Cerjanec brought up the e-learning data to Education Minister Paul Calandra last week during question period at Queen’s Park.   

“The data has shown that students and parents don’t want [e-learning]. Our educators know that it isn’t the best for learning,” he said. 

“It’s clear that this government is trying to save money on the backs of future generations by pushing digital materials of all forms.”

Cerjanec announced that he will be running for the Liberal leadership last week. 

Calandra responded that thousands of students continue to take e-learning and benefit from the diverse courses offered.  

“We’re hearing from students in all parts of the province, and particularly some of our northern communities, who have said that online courses have given them the opportunity to take a course that they would have never otherwise been able [to take],” he said.

“That’s the whole point. Some students are in, some students are out. It’s about optionality for the students so that they can decide what is best for them.”

A previous analysis of 2024-2025 e-learning enrolment data by CBC News found that the most popular courses students enrolled in were those required to graduate or electives used in university applications. 

WATCH | What enrolment data tells us about the province’s e-learning mandate:

Are high school students using online courses to boost marks?

Six years after e-learning became a mandatory requirement to get an Ontario high school diploma, data shows students aren’t taking online classes to diversify their course selection as the province had intended. CBC’s Talia Ricci breaks down the numbers.

Out of the hundreds of courses offered online for the 2024-25 school year, the most popular was civics and citizenship, a mandatory course that saw nearly 23,000 students enrolled. 

Other popular courses included English, math, and science classes like biology and chemistry, where enrolment was in the thousands.  

Students in the 2023-24 graduating cohort would have taken online learning between 2020 and 2024. The numbers that CBC News obtained from the Trillium do not break down what courses students who completed the e-learning requirement took or in what year they took them in.

Enrolment data for the 2023-24 school year, which could have included these students, shows a similar trend to the figures CBC News previously analyzed.

When asked to comment on the vast majority of the 2023-24 graduating cohort not completing the e-learning requirement, the Ministry of Education did not respond. 

Last week, Liberal MPP and interim party leader John Fraser put forward a private member’s motion seeking to “end the requirement for mandatory e-learning credits for secondary school students and restore online learning as an optional pathway.”  

That motion awaits a vote in the legislature. 

Beyhan Farhadi, an assistant professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education who researches e-learning, said the data reflects a policy failure.

“The lesson from this data is that online learning was an experiment, a policy experiment that failed,” she said.

“The policy, when it was circulated as a proposal, was uniformly rejected by the public, by schools, schools district, unions, teachers — so I’m not surprised to see that we are seeing the enactment of that rejection,” said Farhadi, who also taught as a high school teacher for 15 years.

“For now, it seems like when they have the choice, [students] won’t choose e-learning.”