Growing Success explained: a plain-language guide for Ontario teachers

Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting in Ontario Schools (2010) is the policy behind every mark, rubric and report card comment in an Ontario school from Grades 1 to 12. It's long, but the core ideas fit on a page. Here's a plain-language tour.

The big idea

The primary purpose of assessment and evaluation is to improve student learning. Everything else in the policy flows from that: marks matter, but mostly as a way to show students where they are and what to do next.

The seven fundamental principles

Growing Success says assessment, evaluation and reporting are valid and reliable when teachers use practices that:

1. are fair, transparent and equitable for all students;
2. support every student, including students with special education needs, students learning English, and First Nations, Métis and Inuit students;
3. are carefully planned to relate to the curriculum expectations and learning goals and, as much as possible, to students' interests, learning preferences, needs and experiences;
4. are communicated clearly to students and parents at the start of the course and at other appropriate points;
5. are ongoing, varied and spread over time, so students have multiple chances to show the full range of their learning;
6. give ongoing descriptive feedback that is clear, specific, meaningful and timely;
7. build students' self-assessment skills, so they can assess their own learning, set goals and plan next steps.

A quick test for any assessment plan: would a student and a parent understand it, and does it give the student more than one way and more than one chance to show what they know?

Learning skills and work habits

Six learning skills are reported separately from achievement: responsibility, organization, independent work, collaboration, initiative and self-regulation, each rated Excellent, Good, Satisfactory or Needs Improvement. They're not part of the subject mark. More on what each skill looks like.

The achievement chart

Every course is evaluated across four categories, Knowledge and Understanding, Thinking, Communication and Application, at four levels, with Level 3 as the provincial standard. See the achievement chart explained.

Assessment for, as and of learning

• For learning: the teacher gathers evidence to plan instruction and give feedback.
• As learning: students assess themselves and each other to become independent learners.
• Of learning: evaluation, where the teacher judges the quality of learning and assigns a mark.

Only assessment of learning counts toward the grade. Here's how the three fit together.

Evidence from more than one source

Growing Success expects teachers to draw on observations, conversations and student products when evaluating. This is often called triangulation, and it matters most for students who show their learning better by talking or doing than by writing.

Professional judgement

The policy repeatedly leans on teachers' professional judgement: decisions informed by the curriculum, the policy and your knowledge of the student, especially when deciding a student's most consistent level of achievement, with extra weight on the most recent evidence.

What changed in 2026

From the 2026–27 school year, secondary final marks are 65% classroom work, a mandatory final evaluation (20% in Grades 9–10, 25% in Grades 11–12) and attendance and participation (15% or 10%). Read the full breakdown.

The policy and its updates are on ontario.ca, and your board will have its own procedures that build on it.

Every K9solutions course is built around these ideas: learning goals and success criteria in every lesson, assessment for learning built into each unit, and summatives with four-level rubrics.