As the School Year Begins, Ontario’s Textbook Failure Is Undermining Public Education

by Maj (ret’d) CORNELIU, CHISU, CD, PMSC FEC, CET, P.Eng. Former Member of Parliament Pickering-Scarborough East As Ontario families prepare for the beginning of another school year, students are gathering supplies, adjusting schedules and looking ahead to new academic challenges. Yet many will enter their classrooms without one of the most fundamental instruments of education: a current, comprehensive textbook. This is not a minor administrative matter. Before the first lesson is taught, every student should know that an organized and dependable resource will guide the course from September to June. Ontario taxpayers contribute billions of dollars annually to one of Canada’s most expensive public institutions: the education system. Property-tax bills include a clearly identified education component, and the provincial government provides substantial additional funding. Parents therefore have every reason to expect that students will receive the essential materials necessary for learning from the first day of school. Nevertheless, Ontario students are not necessarily issued textbooks. A striking example is Grade 9 mathematics, for which students are not guaranteed a current, comprehensive textbook. At the very least, high-school students should receive textbooks in their principal academic subjects if Ontario genuinely intends to build a technologically capable, knowledgeable and well-prepared society. Instead, students may begin the year with collections of worksheets, photocopied pages, online links, presentation slides and teacher-prepared notes. Some schools maintain classroom sets of older books, while others depend heavily on electronic resources. What a student receives varies by school, school board and individual teacher. This is not educational modernization. It is fragmentation disguised as flexibility. Ontario’s compulsory Grade 9 mathematics course, MTH1W, is governed by a Ministry of Education curriculum introduced in 2021. The official document is extensive—approximately 222 pages—and contains strands, expectations, instructional considerations, teacher prompts and assessment principles. The curriculum covers number sense, algebra, linear relations, geometry, measurement, data, probability, coding and financial literacy. It tells educators in considerable detail what students are expected to learn. However, it is not a student textbook. It does not provide students with a logically sequenced course containing clear explanations, worked examples, progressively challenging exercises, chapter reviews and answer sections. It is primarily a policy and professional document designed for administrators and educators. It serves regulatory compliance more effectively than it serves a 14-year-old trying to understand an algebraic equation at the kitchen table. A functional education system requires three connected instruments: a provincial curriculum identifying what must be learned, a teacher’s guide supporting instruction and assessment, and a student textbook presenting the subject in an organized and accessible manner. Ontario provides the first and offers extensive material toward the second. It does not guarantee the third—the resource most directly essential to the student. That omission has serious consequences from the opening day of the school year. A textbook gives a course intellectual structure. It allows a student to revisit yesterday’s lesson, prepare for tomorrow’s class, recover material missed during an absence and study independently before an examination. It enables parents and tutors to understand what is being taught and in what sequence. It also establishes a common academic foundation when students change schools or teachers during the year. A collection of digital links and worksheets does not necessarily provide that continuity. Files disappear, online platforms change, links expire, and individual pages become detached from the broader course. Students may complete exercises without understanding how one concept leads logically to the next. Technology can enhance education, but it should not be used as an excuse to abandon coherent instructional materials. Digital resources should complement a properly organized textbook, not replace it with an assortment of disconnected fragments. The problem is particularly serious for students with learning difficulties, limited internet access or a need for consistent organization. It also disadvantages families unable to purchase commercial workbooks, private tutoring or online subscriptions. Textbook policy is therefore an equity issue—and the inequality begins as soon as the school year starts. Some students enter Grade 9 with families able to purchase additional resources and tutoring. Others must depend entirely on whatever collection of materials their particular school or teacher assembles. Ontario law requires publicly funded school boards to provide students with required textbooks and learning materials without charge. Nevertheless, the practical meaning of “provide” has been seriously weakened. A temporary classroom copy, access to an online portal or a package of photocopies may technically satisfy an administrative interpretation while failing to give students a dependable and complete course resource. This is where bureaucratic compliance becomes disconnected from educational purpose. Every decision should be guided by one practical question: what tangible educational benefit does the student receive? The contrast with questionable school-board expenditures reported extensively in the press is disturbing. These incidents demonstrate why the Ontario Ministry of Education must exercise stronger oversight and demand strict accountability for how school boards spend taxpayers’ money. As another school year begins, families must ask why students cannot receive textbooks. These incidents are not representative of every educator, trustee or administrator. Ontario has many dedicated teachers who compensate for systemic deficiencies by producing their own excellent materials, often using their personal time and money. However, teachers should not be expected to spend the opening weeks of school functioning simultaneously as instructors, curriculum designers, editors and textbook publishers. The larger problem is institutional accountability. By 2026, eight Ontario school boards had been placed under provincial supervision amid concerns about deficits, depleted reserves, governance disputes and financial management. This represents a profound failure within the system responsible for safeguarding public education funds. Whether every questionable expenditure meets the criminal definition of corruption is not the central issue. When public money intended for education finances administrative privileges that lack a convincing benefit to students, it constitutes misuse of education funds. When this occurs within institutions protected by weak oversight, complicated procedures and evasive language, it may reasonably be described as institutional corruption in the ordinary moral and political sense. Taxpayers should not be diverted by lawyerly distinctions among “poor judgment,” “mismanagement” and “inappropriate discretionary spending.” The essential question is simple: did the expenditure materially benefit students and their education? If the answer is no, it should not have been charged to an education budget. Ontario should require every compulsory secondary-school course to have an approved, complete and current student resource ready before the school year begins. It may be printed or digital, but every student should receive access to the same core content on the first day of class. Printed copies must be available to students who need or prefer them. Education policy should begin with the learner, not the bureaucracy. A wealthy province capable of producing hundreds of pages of curriculum directives can also produce or procure a coherent Grade 9 mathematics textbook. There is no justification for beginning another school year without guaranteeing that resource to every student. Failure to do so is not innovation, modernization or flexibility. It is systemic educational negligence. As Ontario students return to school, they deserve more than curriculum expectations scattered across websites, worksheets and computer platforms. On the first day of class, every student should receive the basic instrument that generations of successful education systems have understood to be indispensable: a well-written book that enables them to learn throughout the school year.,