Small Gains, Stubborn Gaps
Ontario students posted marginal improvements on standardized tests this year, but math scores across multiple grade levels continue to fall well short of provincial expectations, according to results released today by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) for the 2025-26 school year.
The headline figure remains troubling. Only 52 per cent of Grade 6 students met the provincial math standard — a number that has hovered near the 50 per cent mark for years, meaning roughly half of Ontario’s students in that cohort are not reaching the benchmark their province has set for them.
Grade 3 and Grade 9 students fared somewhat better. Sixty-five per cent of Grade 3 students and 59 per cent of Grade 9 students met the math standard. Every one of those figures represents a one-percentage-point gain over the previous year — modest progress, but progress nonetheless.
Literacy Holds Steadier Ground
Reading and writing results tell a more stable story. Seventy-five per cent of Grade 3 students met the reading standard, and 67 per cent met the writing standard, both slightly above the prior year. At the Grade 6 level, 86 per cent met the reading standard and 85 per cent met the writing standard — unchanged from the year before.
The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test, typically written in Grade 10, saw 86 per cent of first-time eligible students meet the standard. That is one percentage point higher than last year. Overall, the EQAO report characterizes reading and writing skills from elementary through secondary school as having remained steady, with slight improvement over the past three years.
More than 569,000 students across Ontario were assessed in Grades 3, 6 and 9 in both English and French-language schools. Results from French-language schools outpaced the English-language averages in most categories.
Political Reaction
Ontario Liberal interim Leader John Fraser responded sharply to the numbers. He called the results “alarming” and argued that the Ford government has allowed schools and students to fall behind over eight years in office, citing large class sizes, reductions to special education funding, and what he described as a mental health crisis unfolding inside Ontario schools.
Math performance has drawn the sustained attention of successive provincial governments, none of which has managed to push the Grade 6 pass rate meaningfully above the halfway mark. The latest results suggest the gap is narrowing — slowly — but the scale of the challenge facing Ontario’s education system remains significant.
