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Key Points
- Ontario high school students now have attendance and class participation counted toward their final marks, starting with the current school year.
- In Grades 9 and 10, attendance and participation make up 15 per cent of the final mark. In Grades 11 and 12, the share is 10 per cent.
- To earn a top mark of Level 4, roughly comparable to an A, a student must limit unexcused absences to two or fewer per semester.
- The change follows provincial data showing only about 40 per cent of high school students met the regular attendance standard in the 2024-25 school year.
- The policy has drawn both support and criticism, with debate over whether grade-linked attendance helps students or unfairly affects those facing barriers outside school.
The New Rule at a Glance
For many years, Ontario report cards kept attendance and achievement in separate lanes. A student could drift in and out of class and still earn a strong grade, as long as the submitted work measured up. That separation is now over for high school students in the province. Attendance and participation have been brought back into the final mark, and the weight they carry depends on the grade level.
| Grades 9 and 10 | Grades 11 and 12 | |
|---|---|---|
| Share of final mark from attendance and participation | 15 per cent | 10 per cent |
| Unexcused absences allowed per semester for a Level 4 mark | Two or fewer | Two or fewer |
| What counts | Attendance plus class participation | Attendance plus class participation |
The distinction between the two grade bands matters. Younger high school students, who are still forming school habits, face the larger weight. Older students, who are closer to graduation and post-secondary applications, face a smaller but still meaningful share. In both cases, the message from the province is the same: being present and taking part is now part of how achievement is measured, not an optional extra that sits beside it.
Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra has framed the change in plain terms. When students are not in class, he has said, they fall behind, and classrooms suffer for it. In a short video released to promote the policy, he argued that for years participation did not count, so students could drift in and out and still pass. That, in his words, ends now. The minister has also acknowledged something striking about how the old system came about: he himself had assumed attendance and participation were still part of the mark, only to learn that they had been removed many years earlier.
A Timeline: How Ontario Got Here
The new policy did not appear out of nowhere. It is the latest step in a story that stretches back more than a decade, and each stage helps explain why the province decided to act when it did.
Before 2010, attendance and performance were treated as connected parts of a student’s record. Then the two were separated on provincial report cards, so that a student’s marks reflected academic work alone, whatever their attendance record looked like. The separation lasted for many years, and during that time the link between showing up and being graded quietly faded from the system.
The pandemic years then changed attendance patterns across the province, as they did in school systems around the world. When schools reopened, many students did not return to their old attendance habits. Provincial data obtained by CBC News from Ontario’s Ministry of Education shows the scale of the shift: before the pandemic, in 2018-19, nearly 60 per cent of high school students regularly attended school. By the 2024-25 school year, that figure had fallen to about 40 per cent. At the elementary level, just over half of Grade 1 to 8 students, 55.5 per cent, met the attendance standard in 2024-25, down from nearly 70 per cent before the pandemic. Regular attendance in this data means attending at least 90 per cent of school days in the year.
Against that background, the minister announced a sweeping set of changes to English school boards, including tying class attendance to final high school marks, tying participation to marks, and mandating written exams for high school students. The attendance change took effect with the current school year, making Ontario one of the most closely watched examples of a grade-linked attendance policy anywhere. The full account of the minister’s announcement and the thinking behind it is covered in the original C2C Journal report.
Why the Province Says Change Was Needed
The province’s case rests on two ideas that are simple to state and hard to dispute in general terms. The first is that attendance and learning are connected. A student who misses lessons misses explanations, discussions, group work and feedback that cannot always be recovered by reading notes afterwards. The second is that the old system hid the problem. When attendance sat apart from marks, a school could look healthy on paper while a large share of its students were regularly absent. Bringing the two together, the province argues, makes the attendance picture visible in the place everyone watches most closely: the final grade.
There is also a classroom argument behind the change. Teachers have told the minister they wanted action on record absenteeism after the pandemic, and the minister has said the decision to tie attendance to marks came directly from those conversations. A classroom where attendance is uneven is harder to teach, because lessons must be repeated, group work must be reshuffled, and discussions lose continuity. From this point of view, the policy is not only about individual students. It is about restoring the conditions in which teaching works best for everyone in the room.
Supporters of the approach add a habit argument. School is one of the first places where young people learn that showing up consistently matters, and that argument has a long history. The essential link between presence and performance has been discussed since the earliest days of formal education, and modern research on attendance continues to support it. Students who attend regularly tend to keep up with coursework, stay connected to classmates and teachers, and build the routines that later working life also demands. A guide to improving attendance percentage sets out practical steps that families and schools can take together to build those routines before absence becomes a pattern.
The Debate: Two Views of the Same Policy
Few education policies divide opinion as sharply as this one, and the Ontario debate shows why. Both sides agree that attendance has fallen and that something should be done. They disagree about whether linking marks to attendance is the right something.
Those who support the policy argue that clear expectations change behaviour. When attendance carries weight in the final mark, students and families have a concrete reason to treat every school day as important, not only exam days or assignment deadlines. Supporters also point to fairness in a different sense: students who attend every day and take part in class deserve to have that commitment recognised, rather than watching classmates earn the same grade with far less presence. From this perspective, the two-absence threshold for a top mark is not harsh. It leaves room for the occasional missed day while drawing a clear line around repeated unexplained absence.
Critics raise a different concern, and it deserves equal attention. They argue that attendance is not always a matter of choice. A student kept home to look after younger siblings while a parent works, a student dealing with a health issue, or a student facing transport problems may miss school for reasons no grade incentive can fix. Research on attendance incentives offers only limited support for grade-based rewards on their own, unless they are paired with broader reforms and targeted supports. Critics warn that attaching marks to attendance can end up rewarding students who are already well placed to attend, while adding pressure on students whose barriers sit outside the classroom. The question they ask is whether the policy will reach the students who need help most, or simply record their difficulties in a harsher form.
Both arguments point to the same practical test. The policy will be judged not by its announcement but by its results: whether attendance rises, whether the students who were missing most often return, and whether schools pair the new grade weight with real support for families facing genuine barriers. A school that only records absence, without asking why it happens, will learn little from the new numbers. A school that uses the numbers to start conversations and offer help stands a better chance of changing them.
What the Change Means in Practice
For students
For high school students in Ontario, the practical effect is immediate and easy to understand. Attendance is no longer background information on a report card. It is part of the mark itself, alongside tests, assignments and exams. That means a strong academic record now requires steady presence as well as strong work. The two-absence limit for a Level 4 mark gives students a clear target: occasional absence is survivable, but repeated unexplained absence will cost marks, even if coursework is otherwise strong.
Students should also note what the policy counts. The weight covers attendance and participation together, so simply being in the room is only part of the picture. Taking part in lessons matters too. That combination rewards the full classroom habit: arriving, staying, listening, contributing and keeping up with the work as it is taught.
For parents and carers
For parents, the change makes tracking attendance more important than before. Under the old system, a few missed days might have shown up only as an attendance note. Now those days feed directly into the final mark, so a pattern that once seemed minor can carry academic weight by the end of the semester. Families who keep an eye on attendance through the term, rather than discovering the total at report card time, will be in a much stronger position to act early.
It also helps to understand how schools turn days missed into percentages. Missing 10 per cent of the school year is the commonly used threshold for chronic absence, which works out to roughly 18 days across a typical school year. A guide to calculating the absenteeism rate explains how those figures are worked out, and a guide to calculating average attendance shows how schools combine individual records into class and school figures. Knowing the number, even roughly, turns an abstract concern into something a family can discuss with the school while there is still time to change it.
For teachers and schools
For teachers, the change restores a tool they had lost: the ability to reflect presence and participation in the grade itself. But it also adds a responsibility. Teachers and schools will need to apply the attendance component fairly and consistently, distinguishing between absences a family has explained and those that remain unexplained. Clear communication with families about how the attendance share is calculated, and early warnings when a student approaches the threshold, will matter as much as the rule itself. Without that communication, families may first learn about the effect of absence only when the final mark arrives, which is too late to fix.
Questions Readers Are Asking
How much of the final mark is attendance worth in Ontario now?
In Grades 9 and 10, attendance and class participation together make up 15 per cent of the final mark. In Grades 11 and 12, the combined share is 10 per cent. The change applies to high school students in Ontario, starting with the current school year.
How many unexcused absences can a student have and still earn a top mark?
To earn a Level 4 mark, roughly comparable to an A, a student must limit unexcused absences to two or fewer per semester. Absences that a family has explained are treated differently from unexplained absences, so families should make sure the school has a record of the reason for any absence.
Why did Ontario change its attendance rules?
Provincial data showed regular attendance had fallen sharply since before the pandemic. In the 2024-25 school year, only about 40 per cent of high school students met the regular attendance standard, defined as attending at least 90 per cent of school days, compared with nearly 60 per cent in 2018-19. The minister said teachers had asked for action on record absenteeism, and the province decided to reconnect attendance with final marks.
Does the policy apply to elementary school students too?
The grade weight applies to high school students in Grades 9 to 12. Elementary attendance has also fallen, with 55.5 per cent of Grade 1 to 8 students meeting the regular attendance standard in 2024-25, down from nearly 70 per cent before the pandemic, but the mark-linked change is aimed at the high school years.
What should a family do if their child is starting to miss school often?
Start by talking to the school about the specific reason, whether it is transport, health, anxiety or a scheduling problem, and make sure explained absences are recorded. Track attendance through the term so a pattern is spotted early, while it is still easy to reverse. Schools that combine the new grade weight with practical support for real barriers give families the best chance of turning attendance around.
What to Watch Next
Ontario’s experiment will be watched far beyond the province. If attendance climbs and the students who were missing most often return to class, other school systems may look closely at a similar model. If attendance barely moves, or if the burden falls unevenly on students facing barriers outside school, the debate will shift toward support-based approaches instead. The most useful evidence will come over the next few school years, as the province tracks not only overall attendance but also which groups of students are improving and which are not.
For families anywhere, the Ontario story carries a simpler lesson that does not depend on where they live. Attendance is easy to overlook day by day and hard to recover semester by semester. A day here and a day there add up, and the earlier a pattern is noticed, the easier it is to change. The free attendance percentage calculator turns days attended into a clear percentage in seconds, so families can see where they stand before a small slide becomes a large one. Knowing the number early, and acting on it early, is the part of this story that applies in every school system.
