High school and elementary student attendance is plummeting in Ontario, data shows, just as the province’s education minister has announced sweeping changes to English school boards that include tying class attendance to final high school marks. 

The data, obtained by CBC News from Ontario’s Ministry of Education, shows that just 40 per cent of high school students regularly attended school in the 2024-25 school year. 

It’s a steep drop in comparison to attendance before the COVID-19 pandemic, which stood at nearly 60 per cent for high schoolers in 2018-19.

At the elementary school level, just over half — 55.5 per cent — of Grade 1-8 students met the attendance standard. Before COVID-19, attendance was at nearly 70 per cent.

Regular attendance standard is defined as 90 per cent. To meet the standard, students must have attended at least 90 per cent of the total school days in each year.   

Education Minister Paul Calandra said the decision to tie attendance to final high school marks came from teachers asking him to do something about record absenteeism rates after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“A student should be in the school. If you can be there, you should be in class. You should be learning, you should be participating,” he told reporters Wednesday at Queen’s Park.

Students in Grades 9 and 10 will now have 15 per cent of their final mark tied to attendance, with the amount dropping to 10 per cent for those in Grades 11 and 12.

The change is part of a sweeping set of measures Calandra announced Monday. For high school students, additional changes also include tying participation to final marks and mandating written exams. 

At the school board level, the number of elected trustees will be capped and two new executive positions will be introduced to oversee school boards.  

Mixed reaction from students

Berk Yaveuz, a high school student at Jarvis Collegiate, said the new measures from the province would push him to attend class.  

“[I’ll] need to attend class to get marks, so I’ll have to,” he said. 

Yaveuz said it’s not surprising that many students aren’t regularly attending school because “we just need [the] grades.” 

Persia Boothe, also a student at Jarvis Collegiate, said students could be skipping classes because “school is kind of boring … it’s not really fun and not enjoyable.”   

Boothe said she doesn’t think tying attendance to school marks would motivate students to show up, and it wouldn’t personally motivate her to go to class. 

“I know for a lot of people, if they already don’t care about their grade or the work or the school or the courses, they don’t care about their attendance,” she said.

Absenteeism a ‘very serious problem,’ expert says 

School absence is a “very serious problem,” says Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, an associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University who researches education policy.

Gallagher-Mackay said absenteeism has gotten more pronounced since the COVID-19 pandemic, is highly associated with health challenges and has “serious long-term outcomes for students.” 

WATCH | Students react to attendance changes:

Students react to Ontario’s planned attendance changes

Reaction is pouring in from Toronto high school students after Ontario announced changes to rules around attendance. If passed, the legislation would make participation and attendance worth 15 per cent for grades 9 and 10 and 10 per cent for grades 11 and 12.

Absenteeism is typically defined by school boards as students missing 10 per cent or more of school days.

“I think we saw a really big shift in terms of the acceptability of absenteeism during the COVID pandemic, and I’m not sure that that culture shift has fully reversed,” Gallagher-Mackay told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning. 

“We should be paying attention to the question of promoting attendance at school,” she said. “The question is, is this a good way to do it?”