The Education Act on Special Education

The principal provisions governing special education in Ontario were introduced into the Education Act by the Education Amendment Act of 1980 (Bill 82). Many of the provisions of Bill 82 have been changed or removed by subsequent amendments to the Education Act. Consequently, the actual text of Bill 82 is of historical interest only. However, the principal provisions of Bill 82 remain in the Education Act. These include:

• the responsibility of school boards to provide (or to purchase from another board) special education programs and special education services for their exceptional pupils (paragraph 7 of subsection 170(1));

• a special education program is defined as an educational program that is based on and modified by the results of a continuous assessment and evaluation of the pupil and that includes a plan (now referred to as an Individual Education Plan) containing specific objectives and an outline of the educational services that meets the needs of the exceptional pupil (subsection 1(1));

• the responsibility of the Minister (Subsection 8(3)):
  • to require school boards to implement procedures for the early and ongoing identification of the learning abilities and needs of students;
  • to define exceptionalities of pupils and to prescribe classes, groups or categories of exceptional pupils and to require the use of these definitions by school boards;
  • to provide an appeal process for parents concerning special education identification and/or placement decisions;
  • to ensure that special education programs and services are provided without payment of fees by school boards to their exceptional pupils;

• the establishment of a Ontario Special Education Tribunal to provide final and binding arbitration in disagreements between a parent and school board concerning the identification or placement of an exceptional pupil.