Review and assessment of Ontario school board policies and procedures on outdoor education/excursions involving water-related activities
In the wake of the drowning of Ontario student Jeremiah Perry on an outdoor education canoe trip, the Ministry of Education contracted Deloitte consultants to do a review of school board policy related to outdoor education. The professional outdoors community was waiting for a bomb to drop, but what was produced was a reasoned, improvement oriented report.
A review of the facts was previously covered on this site (link here). It turned out to be the most read post ever, with over 10,000 reads in the first week. The wearing of PFD's struck a chord, and I heard from several youth organizations that have changed their policies to include much more PFD use than they used to, and in some cases going PFD at all times, something which I support for any kids programming.
Further background: The Ministry of Education has no 'policy' regarding outdoor education. It relies upon the Ontario Physical Health Educators Association (OPHEA), an external not-for-profit who 'support' education and who provide guidelines on safe sport and activities. This seems strange - the Ministry foregoing policy and instead pointing towards an external body's guidelines. There is a lot of nuance in the above statement. OPHEA is not binding upon any teacher; they provide guidelines and recommendations. The Ministry points to these guidelines in lieu of specific policy. Most school boards and Principles hold the guidelines as hard lines (and force their teachers to comply), while other Principles view them for what they are: guidelines. This creates much inconsistency between boards and confusion for teachers, especially for outdoor education programming (it is pretty straightforward when reading the volleyball guidelines, by contrast).
Regardless, the Deputy Minister of Education accepted the Deloitte report findings. The recommendations are this:
- Develop a set of guiding
parameters for the monitoring and assessment of school compliance with
board policies and procedures
- Identify training needs and
build capacity
- Establish a centralized
policy implementation support centre
The ball is in the Ministry of Education court to put this into practice. Read the full report:
Review and assessment of Ontario school board policies and procedures on outdoor education/excursions involving water-related activities
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/memos/may2018/deloitte-outdoor-education-excursion-en.pdf