A/HRC/43/41/Add.5 • The students captured in the other part of this statistic, the 85%, are students who do receive special education programs and/or services in regular classrooms for more than half of the instructional day; • At times school boards in Ontario may also use other names to refer to special education classes such as “Congregated classes” and/or “System designated classes”. Page 10, Paragraph 48 Recommended language 25. In Quebec, section 235 of the Education Act grants school boards the power to adopt, after consultation with the advisory committee on services for handicapped students and students with social maladjustments or learning disabilities, a policy concerning the organization of educational services for such students. The policy shall ensure the harmonious integration of each student into a regular class or group and into school activities if it has been established on the basis of the evaluation of the student’s abilities and needs that such integration would facilitate the student’s learning and social integration and would not impose an excessive constraint or significantly undermine the rights of the other students. In 2017, the Government of Quebec adopted the first Policy on Educational Success that prioritises the needs of all children and students without distinction. This has fostered an increase in the number of students with disabilities receiving education in mainstream schools (i.e., 77 per cent of the total number of students with disabilities). However, simultaneously, the government is investing CAD$20 million to create at least 150 new segregated classes within regular schools in 2019-2020. Comment/Rationale 26. The proposed changes reflect the goals of the policy that prioritizes taking into account the needs of children. Quebec cannot confirm the “77 per cent” with regards to total number of children with disabilities in mainstream school. Page 10, Paragraph 50 Recommended language 27. With regard to post-secondary education, persons with disabilities are less likely than those without disabilities to graduate from university. Statistics Canada data indicates that almost 80 per cent of persons with disabilities completed high school, but only 19.6 per cent had a university degree at the bachelor’s level or higher, compared to 31.4 per cent of Canadians without disabilities. To address this, in 2019 the federal government revised the Canada Student Loan Services programme and introduced new measures specifically targeting students with disabilities, including by expanding of the eligibility criteria for loans and increasing the cap for services and equipment from CAD 8,000 to CAD 20,000 per year. While this is a good example of federal leadership, unless the systemic barriers preventing students with disabilities from accessing inclusive education from kindergarten to university are addressed in law and policy at all levels of government, this measure will fail to produce all the intended results. Comment/Rationale 28. The citation in the draft for this statement links to a correction notice that the original statistics were underestimated due to a sample size error that occurred in coding. While the 14% is taken from the updated figure, the update is for the 2012 CSD data8. 8 Source: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-654-x/89-654-x2015001-eng.htm. 7