This article, authored by Anna Stokke and Malcolm Bird, was originally published by The Globe & Mail on January 30, 2026.

 

Anna Stokke is a mathematics professor at the University of Winnipeg, adjunct professor at La Trobe University’s School of Education in Australia, and author of a recent C.D. Howe Institute report on improving Canada’s math scores. Malcolm Bird is a political science professor at the University of Winnipeg.

 

Ontario’s recent EQAO results show insufficient progress in reading and mathematics. In 2024-25, 36 per cent of Grade 3 students, 49 per cent of Grade 6 students and 42 per cent of Grade 9 students failed to meet provincial math standards, showing little improvement over the last three years despite targeted provincial initiatives.

 

To its credit, the Ontario government has responded by initiating a review of student assessment and achievement. Ontario would benefit from looking beyond Canada to jurisdictions that have reversed education declines.

 

England stands out for implementing bold education reforms that led to major gains in reading and math assessments. These reforms are described in the book Reforming Lessons: Why English Schools Have Improved Since 2010 And How This Was Achieved, by Sir Nick Gibb and Robert Peal. Mr. Gibb is the former education minister who oversaw England’s reforms.

 

Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra has stated he wants to go “outside of my ministry, because asking the people who have been in charge for the last 50 or 60 years to review themselves doesn’t necessarily come up with the best answers.” Mr. Calandra is right to seek an independent review. Rather than delegating reform to the “education establishment” invested in preserving existing approaches, it would be wise to rely on educators and leaders committed to evidence-based practice, which was a key feature of England’s approach.

 

Mr. Gibb argues that the root cause of England’s poor educational outcomes was an ideology he calls “progressivist education,” which dominates teacher training, many classrooms and government education departments. This ideology manifests in several ways: An aversion to exams; resistance to explicit instruction and practice; and rejection of proven methods like phonics or memorizing times tables. These ideas are often labelled as “student-centred learning,” “discovery” or “inquiry learning,” or “project-based learning.”

 

The orthodoxy is presented as “research-based” but its evidence is weak or non-existent. Proponents claim to prioritize higher-order skills, like critical thinking, and treat knowledge acquisition and teacher-centred instruction as impediments to those aims. England’s reforms challenged this assumption, drawing on evidence from cognitive science that higher-order thinking depends on foundational knowledge, built through explicit instruction and practice.

 

The Ontario government has committed to a “back to basics” approach. Yet the results so far suggest that entrenched beliefs within the system may be limiting these efforts. If Ontario is serious about improving education outcomes, it should follow England’s lead and shift authority away from influential groups that undermine reform efforts.

 

This begins with a review of policy documents. When Mr. Gibb’s draft math curriculum went out for informal consultation, it returned with all 64 mentions of the word “practice” crossed out, reflecting the belief that practice is rote or boring. Guided by evidence on the importance of practice, Mr. Gibb restored each term. Ontario should be wary of allowing individuals hostile to its proposed reforms to influence curriculum documents, as they may dilute those changes.

 

England also replaced vague curriculum competencies with a knowledge-rich curriculum, inspired by Singapore and Shanghai, which consistently outperform Western countries on international assessments. This was paired with regular phonics screenings, a times-tables check, and a calculator ban on standardized math tests. The current practice of allowing calculators on EQAO assessments should cease, and students should demonstrate automatic recall of times tables.

 

England also rebalanced power within the education system by establishing “free schools” and “academies” (similar to charter schools) and reforming teacher preparation. Alternative pathways were developed to allow pre-service teachers to learn evidence-based teaching methods directly from designated schools instead of exclusively from education faculties. Ontario should consider this approach.

 

England’s reforms were met with stern resistance, particularly from faculties of education and teachers’ unions (though often not from teachers themselves). Critics warned the changes would set students back. They were wrong. By 2023, English pupils ranked fourth internationally on PIRLS, an international assessment of Grade 4 reading, with the greatest improvements made by the lowest performing students. While other Western countries declined in math, England improved, becoming the highest-performing non-East Asian country on the international TIMSS Grade 8 mathematics assessment.

 

England’s reforms offer important lessons for Ontario. The core challenge is not simply resources, but the dominance of progressivist education ideologies. Without confronting this directly, additional funding alone is unlikely to produce meaningful change. Ontario’s review presents a welcome opportunity to pursue the kind of evidence-based, system-level reform that reversed England’s decline.