TORONTO — The Ontario government has received leave to appeal a lower court ruling that struck down the Ministry of Education's mandatory math test for new teachers.
The Ontario Court of Appeal has granted the province's application to review the case.
The government maintains that Divisional Court justices made legal errors in their December 2021 decision that found the math test was unconstitutional.
In their ruling, they said the test infringes on equality provisions in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it has a disproportionate impact on racialized teachers.
It found that there were significant disparities in success rates, based on race, when the test was first introduced last year.
Divisional Court also noted that racialized teachers are under-represented in Ontario's school system, saying “racialized students benefit from being taught by racialized teachers.”
In its request for leave to appeal, the government said the court's errors included using too low of a threshold to determine discrimination, given that the test had only been administered once.
It also argued that the ruling was a departure from the Charter principle that a "high degree of deference is owed to government in addressing complex social issues with many potential solutions."
In addition, the government submitted that it's in the public interest to ensure the constitutionality of the Mathematics Proficiency Test, "given its purpose to ensure that children, including those from equity-seeking groups, have teachers who have demonstrated competence in the mathematics curriculum."
Teachers were allowed three hours to take the 75-question test, which was based on content from the provincial math curriculum for Grades 3 to 9.
The pass mark was 70 per cent.
