Ontario students with intellectual disabilities facing exclusion, seclusion, and restraint, says new report

Community Living Ontario and Ontario Parents for Education Support held a media conference at Queen’s Park on April 23 to bring attention to the findings of the 57-page Crisis in the Classroom: Exclusion, Seclusion, and Restraint of Students with Disabilities report.

A shocking number of pupils with intellectual disabilities are increasingly facing exclusion, seclusion, and restraint in Ontario’s schools, says a new report by Community Living Ontario (CLO).

On Wednesday, representatives from the non-profit association along with Ontario Parents for Education Support held a media conference at Queen’s Park to bring attention to the findings of the 57-page Crisis in the Classroom: Exclusion, Seclusion, and Restraint of Students with Disabilities report and how they’re reflective of the “troubling and often hidden” experiences of affected students s in this province.

The study is based on data from the non-profit association’s Ontario School Inclusion Survey, which surveyed almost 550 parents/caregivers on their children’s experiences during the 2022-2023 school year.

The survey found that 29 per cent of those surveyed reported that their child had been “involuntarily secluded” while in school, which Shawn Pegg, CLO’s director of Social Policy and Strategic Initiatives, said equates to being “placed in a separate space away from their peers, often behind locked or blocked doors.” It also revealed that nearly half of the students who were secluded or isolated experienced this more than 10 times, he noted.

“These are students who were regularly placed in a small room with a locked or blocked door, often when they were experiencing very strong emotions, and in more than a quarter of cases, parents first learned of this, of the seclusion, from their child rather than from school staff,” Pegg said, noting that the latest report “mirrors” information published in 2019 by Autism Advocacy Ontario.

“It is incomprehensible that students with disabilities, some as young as five and six years old, are being physically restrained and isolated from their peers. This is especially true, given that these issues have been well known in the school system for more than a decade.”

He added that 14 per cent of the survey’s respondents reported that their child had been physically restrained while in school, including being held down on the ground, held while standing, or held while being forced to walk, while 31 per cent said their child had been sent home or told to stay home because the school was unable to meet their needs. The survey also found that this is significantly impacting school attendance as one in five students in the study go to school on a part-time basis.

These findings, said Pegg, paint a “very worrying picture of the state of the education system for students with disabilities in Ontario,” adding that they also demonstrate that there’s an “urgent need for action from the Premier and from the Minister of Education.”

“We know that teachers and other school staff are doing the best they can in often difficult circumstances. However, they lack adequate support, sufficient training and proper guidance in how to appropriately meet the learning and emotional needs of many students with disabilities,” he said, adding that time and time again they heard from parents whose children “thrive at home in the community and even in some school settings, but due to a “shortage of in-school supports, a lack of training for school staff and a lack of guidance from the province is creating environments that are profoundly stressful for many students with disabilities, which can cause dysregulation and disruptive behavior.”

Elizabeth Garkowski, who has a daughter with autism and Down syndrome, said she’s seen firsthand the “disparities and access to education and education support for children with disabilities last year in response to a nearly 50 per cent cut in our educational assistant staff at my daughter’s school.”

Nine months ago, Garkowski founded Ontario Parents for Education Support, which has grown to more than 2,300 parents and allies across the province who are facing similar challenges.

“Through this community, I have heard countless stories of children being excluded, isolated, restrained or even asked to stay home because of inadequate support staff, improper training or lack of resources,” she said during the news conference before sharing several stories of children with disabilities and their families who had negative experiences in Ontario’s school system.

‘Real children’ reflected in report, says mom of disabled child

“These are not just numbers and statistics that are reflected in this report. These are real children. They are facing real challenges,” she said.

“Access to education is a basic human right, and it is time we ensure that every child, regardless of their needs, has the proper resources and support to thrive in an inclusive and supportive learning environment.”

Garkowski added that the that students are being “forced to stay home because schools can’t meet their needs is unacceptable and shows a clear need for increased support in our classrooms.”

Spokesperson for Minister of Education says province is funding special education

In a written statement provided to CP24, Emma Testani, press secretary for Ontario’s Minister of Education Paul Calandra, underlined that “every student, including students with special education needs, deserves access to the supports they need to succeed in school.”

“Since coming into government, we have increased funding for special education supports every single year. We are investing almost $4 billion annually for special education – the largest investment in Ontario history,” she said in an email, adding that the province has also added 4,000 education assistants “to support teachers, parents, and students with special education needs.”

“We will continue to work with parents and educators to meet the changing needs of our classrooms, but it is absolutely critical that all schools have a plan in place to ensure the safety of their students. School boards must deliver on their mandate to support our students for success.”

Calandra says everyone has the right to ‘highest quality of education’

Speaking with the media on Wednesday afternoon, Calandra said, at this point, he has not taken a detailed look at the CLO’s report and its recommendations, however, he has seen some of the “higher notes” from it.

“Look, everybody has the right to the highest quality of education and parents, no matter how their children are, deserve to know and have to feel confident that their kids are going to be treated properly and that they’re going to be safe in the system,” he said, adding the province is providing “significant resources for special education, but if more needs to be done, then we’ll do more.”

The minister did say that consistency in the education system is something he and his team are working on.

“Parents want to know that regardless of what board they are in, there’s the system level of funding. The funding that we provide is managed to provide that consistency, but we’re not seeing boards treated to do the same thing,” he said.

“So that is with all of this accountability that what we’re announcing today, but going forward, we keep talking about boards of education and putting them on notice. There is an expectation that student achievement is put first and that teachers have the resources they need with this record level of funding to get the job done.”