Toronto’s two biggest school boards have decided not to administer a new secondary school literacy test amid a COVID-19 pandemic that has led to significant upheaval for students and teachers alike.
Both the Toronto District School Board and the Toronto Catholic District School Board were slated to administer a new standardized test to students in Grade 10 and 11 this spring as part of a provincial pilot project but within a few hours on Friday both boards issued separate communication to parents, indicating that they would be scrapping the test for this year only.
“We recognize that the pandemic has presented varying challenges associated with mental health and anxiety among our students and school communities and we believe it is in the best interest of our students not to create further undue pressure as they work towards completion of the school year,” TCDSB Director of Education Dr. Brendan Browne said in his letter to parents. “We continue to focus on maximizing classroom instruction time as much as possible to promote student success and wellbeing.”
The decision by the TCDSB and the TDSB to not to administer the standardized test this year comes one week after the Ontario Principal’s Council and the Catholic Principal’s Council of Ontario released a joint statement to calling on the province to cancel the pilot for this year.
In a post on its website, the TDSB acknowledged that it has been a “challenging and stressful time” for students and said that it did do not want to “add another item to students’ plates.”
"Given our commitment to equity, this is a significant barrier for virtual students. Further, it would be challenging to offer the assessment to students learning in-person while also maintaining cohorts and physical distancing and ensuring health and safety practices are followed," the statement notes.
Schools in Toronto were forced to switch to online-learning only amid a spike in COVID-19 cases following the holidays and only reopened on Feb. 15.
Last week, University of Toronto epidemiologist Dr. Colin Furness told Newstalk 1010 that he believes schools will be shuttered again in mid-April once new, more infectious variants “really pick up steam.”
