If your child is starting Ontario kindergarten in September, you have likely come across the headlines over the past year and a half about the "new kindergarten curriculum."
The province first announced this revised curriculum in January 2024, titling its announcement "Ontario Unveils a Back-to-Basics Kindergarten Curriculum." Some headlines also used the "back to basics" language.
However, the revised 2026 kindergarten curriculum is an update to the 2016 program, not a replacement of its foundational approach.
Play-based learning, inquiry and the whole-child framework are all retained. What is new is a set of explicit literacy expectations grounded in literacy research, a more formal tiered support model and several new curriculum areas.
