Schools must collect demographic data of students more, report says

The report, commissioned by the Ontario Ministry of Education, said this kind of demographic data could help the educators to make the learning more inclusive.

A York University education professor and co-author of the report, Carl James, was quoted by the Star: "If you want to be able to work with particular groups of students, you should know who they are, otherwise you might be putting (resources) where they’re not addressing the issues directly, and that doesn’t help."

Media report said some of the data collected by the Toronto District School Boards revealed that the possibility of suspension of black students from school are twice than the others.

Report by the Star said a legislation is expected to take place as a part of the plan of the Ontario province to fight systemic racism.

James said the schools can improve their data collection by asking their students' demographic details during registration.

"Right now, the long-form census does collect race data, so it’s not something that’s beyond what we collect in Canada," he added.

The York report urged all school boards to improve their data collection of students by 2018-2019.

(Reporting by Souvik Ghosh)