Under the Ontario Education Act, every student with special needs is entitled to an Individual Education Plan (IEP) and access to an Identification, Placement and Review Committee (IPRC)
Know before you sign
The short version
Families arrive at private school for good reasons. Usually it is because the public system has already failed their child — an unfilled educational assistant absence that became a shortened day, a placement that never suited, a year of asking. We are not going to pretend that system works well. Our own coverage of the Auditor General’s findings says otherwise.
But it is worth knowing precisely what you are trading. Almost all of the process that protects a disabled student in Ontario is attached to the public system. It is in the Education Act and the regulations under it, and it binds school boards. A private school is not a school board.
So the identification disappears, the written plan disappears, the committee disappears, the appeal disappears. What does not disappear is the Human Rights Code. That is a real protection and it matters — but it works differently, and slowly.
Side by side
Publicly funded board
The Identification, Placement and Review Committee (IPRC) process identifies a student as exceptional and decides placement, with written reasons and a right to appeal.
Private school
No IPRC. There is no statutory identification process and no placement decision to appeal.
Publicly funded board
An Individual Education Plan (IEP) is required for every identified student, must be reviewed each reporting period, and parents must be consulted.
Private school
No requirement to write an IEP at all. Some private schools write one voluntarily; that is a service commitment, not a legal duty, and it can change.
Publicly funded board
Every board must have a Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC), with parent representation, that reviews the board’s special education plan.
Private school
No SEAC. No equivalent oversight body, and no seat for parents.
Publicly funded board
Identification and placement decisions can be appealed to the Ontario Special Education Tribunal. Suspensions and expulsions carry appeal rights.
Private school
No tribunal. No statutory appeal from any decision the school makes about your child.
Publicly funded board
A publicly funded school must educate a resident student. Exclusions, suspensions and expulsions are governed by the Education Act and can be challenged.
Private school
The tuition contract governs. A private school can decline to re-enrol, or end the placement mid-year, on the terms of that contract — with no statutory process to challenge.
Publicly funded board
The Ontario Human Rights Code applies. Failure to accommodate to the point of undue hardship is actionable at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
Private school
The Code still applies. A private school provides a service under section 1 of the Code, so refusing or ending a placement because of disability remains actionable — but the remedy is individual, slow, and comes after the harm.
The part nobody mentions
Most families worry about admission. Admission is a single conversation, and if it goes badly you find out immediately and keep looking.
That does not mean admission is unprotected. As the table above sets out, refusing a child because of their disability may itself be discrimination in the provision of a service, and is actionable.
But the harder problem is the exit. A private-school placement rests on a tuition contract, and a contract can end. If a school decides in November that your child’s needs have grown beyond what it can manage, there is no identification to revisit, no placement decision to appeal, no tribunal, and no obligation on any other private school to take your child instead. You return to your home board mid-year, and start the identification process you never began.
That is the asymmetry worth understanding: in the public system a bad decision is slow, procedural and appealable. In a private school it can be a phone call.
This is also why a funding entitlement, if Ontario ever created one, would not by itself help. Money that follows a child to a school which need not admit them, need not keep them, and need not write a plan for them is not a placement. It is a subsidy. We looked into who is proposing that, and what we found →
For context on scale: of roughly 1,445 independent schools in Ontario, 57 emphasize special education — about 3.9% of the sector, on the count published by an organization that supports funding them. Some of those 57 schools are excellent, and this page is not an argument against them. It is an argument about what a family can enforce.
Before you sign
A school that supports disabled students well will answer all of these readily. Hesitation on the last two is the signal worth paying attention to.
Ask for the answers by email rather than in a meeting. A written answer is what you will need later if the placement goes wrong.
If it goes wrong
This section explains what the law allows in general. It is not an assessment of your situation and it is not legal advice.
The Human Rights Code is the protection that follows your child. If a private school refused your child, or ended a placement, because of disability — rather than for a reason unrelated to it — that may be discrimination in the provision of a service, and it can be taken to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
Two practical notes. Keep the record: emails, the contract, what you were promised about supports and by whom. And get advice early rather than late — the Human Rights Legal Support Centre and ARCH Disability Law Centre both provide free assistance, and there are time limits on applications.
If your child is returning to your home board, the identification process starts there. Start with the IPRC guide →
This page is general information about how Ontario’s education and human rights systems are structured. It is not legal advice, and it is not a comment on any particular school or any individual case.
SOURCE
Cardus • 2021-09-15
Authors David Hunt, Anointing Momoh and Deani Van Pelt. Seven models, 21 cost estimates.
SOURCE
Cardus • 2019-03-20
SOURCE
CanLII • 2001
The 2001 tax credit as enacted, and its repeal.
SOURCE
Fraser Institute • 2020-09-08
Author Derek J. Allison. Report text was not retrievable at time of writing; its specific recommendations and costings are deliberately not reproduced.
SOURCE
Cardus • 2022-11-22
Authors David Hunt, Joanna DeJong VanHof and Jenisa Los. Source for the composition of Ontario’s independent-school sector, including the count of schools emphasizing special education as of July 2022.
SOURCE
United Nations Human Rights Committee • 1999-11-05
Views of the Committee on Ontario’s funding of Catholic but not other religious schools. Not binding in Canadian law.
SOURCE
Angus Reid Institute, in partnership with Cardus • 2026-01-30
Written by Spencer Carroll
Founder & Autism Advocate
Evidence on this page
Key claims are paired with their source, evidence tier, and verification date so readers can inspect the public record directly.
Under the Ontario Education Act, every student with special needs is entitled to an Individual Education Plan (IEP) and access to an Identification, Placement and Review Committee (IPRC)
89,799
children are registered in the Ontario Autism Program
1 in 50
According to the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth, about 1 in 50 children and youth aged 1 to 17 in Canada had an autism diagnosis
23%
Only 20,633 children have active funding agreements (23%) — less than one in four
WHO recommends accessible, community-based early interventions for children with autism — timely evidence-based psychosocial interventions improve communication and social engagement