Ontario's Early Reading Screening results are now a line on the first report card of the year, and more families are showing up to a tutoring session already holding one. Here is a working refresher on what structured literacy actually looks like in practice, for grades 1 through 8, not just kindergarten.
What Does "Below Benchmark" Mean on Ontario's Early Reading Screening?
"Below benchmark" on Ontario's Early Reading Screening means a student's score suggests a moderate likelihood of needing extra support to reach grade-level reading proficiency. It is not a diagnosis, does not change a report-card grade, and does not by itself qualify a student for a special education designation.
Since September 2024, every Ontario student in Year 2 Kindergarten through Grade 2 has been screened for early reading skills under Policy/Program Memorandum 168. Boards use a ministry-approved, evidence-based tool, most commonly Acadience Reading, and students are screened twice a year unless they met the benchmark on the first pass, in which case the second screening is optional (Government of Ontario, PPM 168, last updated December 18, 2024). The result now appears as its own line on the first report card of the year, sorted into one of three tiers: At/Above Benchmark, Below Benchmark, or Well Below Benchmark (York Catholic District School Board, Early Reading Screening).
A screening result is not a diagnosis and does not trigger a special education label on its own. It flags a likelihood, based on research linking early skills like phoneme segmentation and letter-sound knowledge to later reading proficiency. A family who brings you a "below benchmark" line is not bringing you a verdict. They are bringing you a starting point, and what you do with it depends on actually understanding what the tiers measure.
Why the Refresher Matters Past Grade 2
PPM 168 stops at Grade 2. Most of the students you tutor in Grades 3 through 8 were never screened this way, or were screened years ago and the result never left the classroom. That gap matters because reading struggles do not resolve on their own once a child leaves primary grades. Ontario's own data shows steady but incomplete progress: 74 per cent of Grade 3 students met the provincial reading standard in 2024-25, up from 71 per cent the year before, and 86 per cent of Grade 6 students met the standard, up from 82 per cent (EQAO, Assessment Results for the 2024-25 School Year, released December 3, 2025).
Read plainly, that means roughly one in four Grade 3 students and about one in seven Grade 6 students are still not meeting the standard, years after any screening result would have been recorded. Ontario's 2023 Language curriculum for Grades 1 to 8 requires the same evidence-based, systematic, and explicit instruction PPM 168 screens for in the early grades (Ontario Human Rights Commission, Two-Year Update to the Right to Read Inquiry Report). We covered the JK and SK side of that same shift in more detail in our 2026 kindergarten curriculum guide, but the screening itself stops at Grade 2. For a tutor, that means the techniques behind early screening do not stop applying once a student turns nine. A Grade 6 student who still guesses at multisyllabic words is very often missing the same foundational skills a kindergarten screening would have caught years earlier, just with more sophisticated coping strategies layered on top.
A Practical Structured Literacy Refresher, Session by Session
Structured literacy is explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic. Each new skill is taught directly rather than inferred from exposure, builds in a fixed sequence from simpler to more complex, is revisited until it is automatic, and is adjusted based on what a running assessment of the student actually shows. That has not changed. What is worth refreshing is how it applies once decoding single-syllable words is no longer the issue.
Where to Get Free, Ontario-Specific Structured Literacy PD
You do not need to build this refresher from scratch. ONlit.org is a provincial resource hub, built in partnership with Dyslexia Canada and the International Dyslexia Association's Ontario branch, offering a free curriculum-aligned resource library, a "Language Foundations Continuum" that unpacks the evidence-based expectations grade by grade, and ready-made professional learning slide decks (ONlit.org, last updated September 11, 2026). It is worth ten minutes before your next session with a flagged reader, particularly if your own teacher training predates the 2023 curriculum shift and leaned on balanced literacy.
Tutoring with Connect Education
Connect Education works exclusively with Ontario Certified Teachers (OCT) and ECEs in good standing. Families increasingly arrive already holding a screening result or a report-card comment and are specifically looking for a certified tutor who can explain what it means and act on it, not just assign more worksheets. If you keep a working structured literacy refresher in your back pocket, that is a real point of difference with families choosing a tutor for a struggling reader, and it pairs well with the scheduling and income groundwork covered in tutoring as side income for OCT teachers. Ready to apply? Start at connect-education.com/start-tutoring, or check the tutoring FAQ first if you have questions about eligibility.
Questions Educators Ask
What is structured literacy, and how is it different from balanced literacy?
Structured literacy teaches phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension explicitly and in a fixed sequence, rather than expecting students to pick up decoding mostly through exposure to books, as balanced literacy often did. Ontario's 2023 Language curriculum for Grades 1 to 8 now requires the structured, explicit approach as the foundation, with rich text exposure built on top of it rather than instead of it.
Do I need to see a student's Early Reading Screening result before I can help them?
No. Screening results only exist for Year 2 Kindergarten through Grade 2, and even when a family has one, it may be months or years old. It is more reliable to run a quick informal check of phoneme awareness, letter-sound correspondence, and decoding yourself in the first session than to rely on a tier recorded long before you met the student.
Does Ontario's Early Reading Screening apply past Grade 2?
No. PPM 168 only mandates screening from Year 2 Kindergarten through Grade 2. Students in Grades 3 and up are not screened this way, which is exactly why reading gaps in older students often go unflagged for years and why a structured literacy refresher matters well beyond the primary grades.
