How Structured Literacy Will Upend Canadian Education
In the AI age, literacy is more important than ever. Even a simple Google search requires users to structure their questions, interpret information and judge the reliability of sources. Students need these core literacy skills, yet for decades, our teaching methods have often closed doors rather than opened them. A few years ago, I worked with the Ontario Human Rights Commission on a public inquiry into the province’s education system to find out whether students with reading disabilities were getting the instruction and interventions they needed. The answer was damning: Ontario wasn’t only failing those students, but many others as well.
Since the ’80s, Canadian school systems have favoured “balanced literacy”—closely related to the “whole language” approach—which places emphasis on oral language and prediction. Students were encouraged to use cues from sentence structure, pictures, letter-sound connections and other context clues to discern the meaning of what they were reading, rather than receiving explicit instruction on how to read. When students came across words they didn’t know, they’d use a carrier sentence they may have memorized, like “The boy ran up to the...” then guess the new word—“truck”—from the picture on the page. Some students did learn to read using this cueing method, but as of 2019, at least a quarter of Grade 3 students didn’t meet the Ontario provincial reading standard.
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The good news is that a different teaching model for reading and writing is sweeping areas of the country, one that will better equip kids for the literacy demands of our time. Research suggests that when we explicitly teach children the relationships between letters and sounds—and how to use them—it helps them to read and spell. This approach is part of a suite of evidence-based practices sometimes called “structured literacy.” Using this model, even students who are new to Canada—those who may be learning English at the same time as they’re learning how to read—can learn to decode words as well as native speakers. It helps give everyone a fair shot.
Over the course of the 2025–26 academic year, schools in provinces like Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta and New Brunswick are on course to implement structured literacy. For about 30 minutes a day, students in early grades will have direct instruction on letter-sound connections, reading words and spelling. They will also learn new vocabulary and writing strategies, for example. And rather than exclusively immersing students in fiction, structured literacy will integrate different genres, like persuasive essays, novels and biographies, as well as texts from other subject areas, like science.
This is a big curriculum change, but students will adjust quickly. Foundational skills are critical, and research shows that when students read for a purpose—like learning about how Arctic mammals survive the extreme cold—they become highly motivated. The enjoyment of reading leads to more reading, but that only happens when instruction is effective. If it is, Canadian parents should expect to hear a lot about polar bears at the dinner table from their enthusiastic young readers.
Schools that use this model see relatively quick improvements. When the Yukon First Nation School Board implemented the structured literacy model in the fall of 2023, for example, it reported impressive results. Before the shift, primary-aged students in five of the board’s 11 schools scored in the overall “poor” to “very poor” range on literacy assessments. One year later, just two schools scored in that range. Yet, despite the positive evidence, many school systems remain loyal to the old ways.
Often, reluctant school boards (and ministries of education) view structured literacy as one more tool in the toolbox instead of replacing previous methods, leaving kids with less helpful lessons. In other cases, assessments haven’t yet caught up. Students are taught to decode and spell words, but school boards might require them to be tested with books that rely on their ability to predict words, like in the old curriculum—an impossible situation for teachers. Many would love to fully implement the new practices but, all too often, system-wide leadership doesn’t adequately support them. A one-time meeting and a box of materials won’t cut it. They need learning opportunities, resources and in-class coaching. And they should not have to spend their own time and money seeking out training.
I’m optimistic that the weight of evidence behind structured literacy will become too hard to ignore. Change takes time, but I’m hopeful students will soon have the opportunity to learn to read and write in a more equitable way. It’s a solid foundation for building skills beyond the classroom.
Jamie Metsala is a professor and the Gail and Stephen Jarislowsky Chair in Learning Disabilities at Mount Saint Vincent University
