The Honourable Brendan Maguire, M.L.A.

Department of Advanced Education
1505 Barrington Street
11th Floor, Maritime Centre
Halifax, NS
B3J 3K5

Dear Minister Maguire,

I am a concerned citizen who would like to support Literacy Justice Nova Scotia's advocacy work seeking restorative, systemic change to immediately support older children in Nova Scotia's public schools in grades 6-12 who continue to struggle to read and write. Literacy is a right not a privilege, and many of these students received non-evidence based literacy instruction and it did not meet their learning needs. Alongside inadequate disability screening, a lack of remedial resources, and staff training in science-based methods, a large cohort of older students with and without learning disabilities now cannot access grade-level curriculum because they cannot read and write at grade-level. The 2024-25 Provincial Assessments make this clear by reporting results which indicate that more than half of Nova Scotia's Grade 6 students cannot write at grade level and a third of Grade 8 students cannot read at grade level. Additionally, the Assessment results include children who received assistive technology, scribes, and/or human reader support to complete these assessments (regardless of IEP/disability indicators), therefore these results paint a less than accurate literacy picture of this province's older children in public schools.

Literacy Justice Nova Scotia has made four recommendations which I support and encourage you to onboard immediately so timely interventions can be made (the fall of the 2026-27 school year at the latest):

1. Expand the NS Department of Education's "Nova Scotia Literacy Intervention Framework (2024)" to explicitly include older children in Grades 6-12 who continue to struggle to read and write.
2. The "Framework" becomes policy, rather than a guideline, to ensure equitable implementation across all Regional Centre's for Education and School Boards in the province and no child is left behind.
3. To implement the tenets of the "Framework" across the province, a new action plan and systemic reorganization of existing funding is required to best support the students with the greatest needs. This action plan would include effective screening, personnel training, and class time to execute. This work may require a protected, finite fund to ensure this cohort of students receive the literacy instruction which is their right and your department's legal obligation to deliver.
4. The new action plan will include implementation monitoring and reporting. This best practice will ensure the action plan is delivered to students in the most cost- and outcome-effective manner with measurable impacts.

To not address the literacy rates of older students who did not receive adequate literacy instruction is to ignore the social consequences of this failure: graduating students without foundational skills for full political participation in society. The Ontario Human Rights Commission clearly stated that the burden of literacy instruction rests with public schools, which must provide foundational instruction in reading and writing to all students, regardless of disability. The Commission noted, "Students who do not develop strong early reading skills struggle in school and later life. This negatively affects the student, their family and broader society.”

We stand behind the families of students who have older children in Nova Scotia public schools who continue to struggle to read and write. We ask that you adopt Literacy Justice Nova Scotia's four recommendations immediately to ensure the long-term safety and security of our society.

Sincerely,