Ontario students' standardized testing results are set to be made public next week, Education Minister Paul Calandra said Monday after he delayed their release, suggesting changes may be coming.
Results from math and literacy testing by the Education Quality and Accountability Office are normally released earlier in the fall for the previous school year, but Calandra said this year he wanted to take a "deep dive" before making them public.
"I'm not going to apologize," he said, despite criticism from the opposition and teachers' unions for not releasing the results yet.
"I spent a lot of time looking at the results. The people of Ontario pay a lot of money for this standardized testing, and I've heard from a lot of teachers. I spent a lot of time since April into the summer speaking to a lot of educators on this as to what they're seeing, and I think we owed it to them to spend the time to look at it."
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Liberal parliamentary leader John Fraser said there is no reason Calandra could not have analyzed the results at the same time as everyone else.
"I think the premier needs to get a minister that can walk and chew gum, because there was nothing preventing him from sending those to the people who needed them, the kids, the educators, their parents," Fraser said in question period.
"So much effort goes into that, and you're willy-nilly like, 'Oh, I’m just holding on to them because I want to look good.'"
Calandra did not indicate if the results for the last academic year were poor. But when asked if he is satisfied with the test being a useful tool, Calandra said more information will come on that next week.
The provincial government has for years tried to tackle low math scores on the standardized tests, though the results released last year showed low but steady or improving math scores, while Grades 3 and 6 reading and writing results were lower.
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said that money spent on EQAO testing would be better directed toward classrooms.
"But if we are going to spend money on the EQAO, then I think students, teachers, parents, communities deserve to know what the scores are," he said after question period.
"For the government to not release them just shows you, once again, that this government doesn't want to be held accountable."
NDP Leader Marit Stiles, whose party previously promised to end EQAO testing if elected, said Monday there is some value in it.
"I actually believe there's a real place for the kind of research that's done there," she said. "What I don't like is the politicization of the EQAO under this government."
When the Tories took office, their first education minister defended naming a failed Progressive Conservative candidate to a full-time, $140,000-a-year position as chair of the EQAO board of directors, a role that had previously been part time with a $225 per diem.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 24, 2025.
