High school students in Ontario will learn from a rebooted technology curriculum starting next year, the province’s education minister says, part of a push to equip them with up-to-date skills needed in a range of skilled trades wrestling with labour shortages.

“What we teach our children must be cutting-edge,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce said at an event in Mississauga on Monday. “It must reflect the changing marketplace.”

The revision follows others the Ford government has made in recent years to mathematics and science courses, which included ditching a split into applied and advanced subject streams in Grade 9 that was blamed for pushing racialized students away from higher education.

A new “digital technology and innovations in the changing world” course will replace “introduction to computer science” for Grade 10 students starting in September 2023, while a revised technological education curriculum for both grades 9 and 10 will be introduced a year later, the government said in a release.

The release noted thousands of vacancies for Ontario jobs currently require computer science or other technological skills, pointed to a looming shortfall of 100,000 construction workers and said one in five job openings in the province will be in the skilled trades by 2026.

The government is pushing the skilled trades as a viable option for those leaving high school, spending nearly half a billion dollars on the strategy over three years.

Keep reading on ca.news.yahoo.com

• 
•