Ontario updating science curriculum to include focus on STEM

The Ontario government has introduced a new science curriculum for Grades 1 through Grade 9 that will focus on “modernizing education and preparing students for success beyond the classroom.”

The new curriculum, which de-streams Grade 9 science, will focus on five main principles including building hands-on STEM skills and inclusion of First Nations, Métis and Inuit knowledges, ways of knowing, and perspectives.

The main new areas of study will be STEM skills, connections, and careers, engineering design process, coding, emerging technology and skilled trades, and environmental protection.

This is the first update to the science curriculum since 2007 for elementary school and 2008 for Grade 9. The new curriculum will be put in place for the 2022/2023 school year.

“Parents want to know that their child is learning relevant, current knowledge that reflects the world we live in today. And that is a world that is becoming more and more interconnected through technology,” said Education Minister Stephen Lecce during a press conference.

Ontario’s updated science curriculum. Source: Ontario Government

The five strands of the new curriculum spaced out over the eight years of schooling are: STEM skills and connections, life systems, matter and energy, structures and mechanisms, earth and space systems. For Grade 9, the focus will be on biology, chemistry, physics and earth and space science.

Feedback from over 60 organizations and stakeholders helped to shape the new curriculum, including Indigenous partners.

The province will be sending out an overview guide to parents and teachers outlining what students will be learning as well as dedicating a PA day next year to STEM.

A call for proposals has also been released to fund Indigenous resources aligned to the curriculum, says the Ministry of Education.

Ontario’s updated science curriculum. Source: Ontario Government

“Our government’s plan from the beginning is always to prepare students for a world that is rapidly changing and to give students the critical life and job skills like mandatory financial literacy, learning how to budget how to buy a home how to pay taxes,” added Lecce. “These are the skills they need to have meaningful careers and to contribute to their homes and our economies.”

Meanwhile the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) say they only provided feedback to the Ministry of Education on this curriculum, including considerations for revision, five days and say they have been “left wondering if anyone at the Ministry considered out input.”

“Similar to the flawed roll-out of Ontario’s revised Mathematics curriculum, school boards are left, once again, to deliver insufficient professional learning on new curriculum on a compressed timeline,” read a statement from president Karen Brown. “The Ford government continues to demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how school boards and schools operate.”