No year-end report cards for Toronto elementary students: TDSB

CTV Toronto: No final report cards Toronto school board joins the 'no report cards' plan as part of the job action for elementary school teachers. Naomi Parness reports.

Students in Toronto public elementary schools will not be receiving report cards at the end of the school year.

Instead, students will be sent home with placement letters, the Toronto District School Board said in a statement on Thursday.

The letters will indicate whether students have passed or failed, but will not include letter grades.

"The production of report cards for more than 170,000 TDSB students requires the electronic inputting of data by teachers," the statement said.

"It is not possible to issue these reports while maintaining the privacy and accuracy of student's marks."

During the week of June 22, principals will send out letters confirming whether the student will go on to the next grade in September.

"I know that students, parents and guardians highly value report card marks and comments and we regret that the current labour situation does not allow us to provide final report cards this year," TDSB Director Donna Quan said in the statement.

The TDSB made the decision the day after York Region and Peel District School Boards said they would be sending the pass-or-fail letters in lieu of report cards.

The decision to hand out pass-or-fail letters comes as teachers continue their work-to-rule campaign. The campaign was announced in April by the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, which represents more than 76,000 teachers, occasional teachers and education works.

Until a decision can be reached with school boards, teachers are not performing certain administrative duties including writing comments on report cards and inputting grades.

Peel District School Board Director of Education Tony Pontes said the board looked into hiring additional staff to enter grades in the report card system, but the estimated cost was $1 million.