In this guide
Four publicly funded systems serve the city, and families choose between the ones they're eligible for.
The Toronto District School Board is the largest school board in Canada, serving approximately 232,000 students across almost 600 schools. Its students speak over 120 languages, and more than 80 percent of its graduates go on to university or college.
The Toronto Catholic District School Board serves more than 84,000 students in over 195 schools, making it the largest publicly funded Catholic school board in the world.
Two French-language boards also operate in the city — Conseil scolaire Viamonde, which is secular, and Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir. These serve families with a right to French-language education, which is different from French immersion, a program offered inside the English boards for children who don't speak French at home.
Toronto also has a substantial private and independent school sector.
That's four public systems plus private options, each with their own programs, admissions quirks and specialized streams. It's a lot to navigate, and it's part of why Toronto parents research education decisions more than families in smaller centres typically do.
Provincial data gives a mixed picture, and math is the part that makes headlines.
In the 2024-25 EQAO assessments, 64 percent of Ontario Grade 3 students met the provincial standard in mathematics, up from 61 and 60 percent in the two preceding years. 51 percent of Grade 6 students met it, barely moved from 50 percent in each of the two previous years. In Grade 9, 66 percent met the standard, up from 61 percent the year before.
Roughly half of Grade 6 students not meeting the standard in math, three years running, is the number worth sitting with. The province has noticed — in December 2025, Ontario's education minister announced advisers would review the approach to standardized testing, citing insufficient improvement in math.
Literacy sits higher but has drifted slightly. In 2023-24, 71 percent of Grade 3 students met the standard in reading and 64 percent in writing, both down marginally on the year before.
None of this tells you anything about your specific child. What it does tell you is that if your child is struggling in math, they are in very ordinary company, and the difficulty is structural rather than personal.
The honest answer is less often than the Toronto conversation suggests, and the signal is persistence rather than severity.
Start with the teacher. They see your child daily, they know whether this is a rough patch or a pattern, and they can usually name the specific skill that's missing. This costs nothing and produces better information than any paid assessment.
Check what's already free. Toronto boards run various homework and after-school supports, and Toronto Public Library offers free programs across its branches. Ask directly rather than assuming.
Then consider outside help when the difficulty persists across a full term despite support at home and school, when a specific gap is clearly holding other work back, or when your child has started saying some version of "I'm just bad at this."
That last one deserves weight. It's a belief rather than a mark, and beliefs harden.
Act sooner in math than in other subjects. Math is cumulative in a way most subjects aren't — a gap doesn't sit still, it compounds. A Level 2 in Grade 6 math is considerably cheaper to address than the same gap in Grade 9.
Most families pay between $30 and $100 an hour, with Toronto sitting at the higher end of Canadian rates generally.
Published figures vary widely — you'll see everything from $29 to $120 quoted — mostly because three different things get described as "the cost of tutoring." Marketplace listings where individual tutors set their own prices show the lowest averages. Agency rates sit higher because they cover recruiting, screening and planning. And job postings describe what tutors are paid, which is not what families are charged.
The main drivers are qualifications, course level and format. Grade 11 and 12 math and sciences cost the most, because fewer tutors can teach them well. Elementary support sits at the bottom of every range.
Our full breakdown of what tutoring costs in Toronto covers the rate by tutor type, what's included at different price points, and how to tell whether you're overpaying.
Both work, and the format matters less than the tutor — but in this city the practical differences are real.
Online costs less, because there's no travel time built into the rate. It also gives you a far wider choice of tutor, which matters most for senior subjects where the pool of people who can teach the course well is small and may be on the wrong side of the city. And it survives Toronto winters, when in-home sessions are the ones that get cancelled.
In-home suits younger children, students who drift on a screen, and parents who want visibility. It also removes any technology to manage.
Commute time is the Toronto-specific variable. A tutor crossing the city at 4pm may spend as long travelling as teaching, which shows up as a higher rate, fewer available time slots, or a declined booking. Our comparison of in-home and online tutoring in Toronto works through which fits which child.
Not sure what your child actually needs? A free consultation will map out which specific skills are missing, usually in about an hour — and sometimes the answer is less help than you expected.
Work out the problem before shopping for the solution. "Behind in math" isn't yet a brief; "missing fraction fundamentals from Grade 5" is.
A few things worth establishing with any provider:
Qualifications for your child's specific grade and subject. In Ontario, ask whether the tutor is OCT-certified and for which divisions. Someone qualified to teach primary is not automatically right for Grade 12 chemistry.
Screening. There is no automatic background check for tutors in Canada. Ask whether the tutor holds a current vulnerable sector check and who verified it.
A plan before teaching. A tutor who starts without finding out what's wrong is guessing.
How you'll know it's working. A provider who can describe what improvement looks like and by when has thought about accountability.
What happens if the match doesn't work. Rapport does a lot of the work in one-to-one teaching, and first matches don't always land.
Our guide to choosing a tutor in Toronto covers the full list of questions, the red flags, and how to tell after eight weeks whether it's working.
Toronto students meet several provincial assessments, and they carry very different weight.
EQAO in Grades 3, 6 and 9. No report card entry, no credit, no pass or fail. It's a provincial snapshot rather than a test your child can lose. Grade 9 math is the one worth attention, because that year underpins every senior math course. Our guide to EQAO for Toronto parents explains what it measures and how to read the results.
The OSSLT in Grade 10. This one is a graduation requirement, though students who aren't successful can rewrite it or take the OSSLC course instead.
Course selection, which nobody calls an assessment. The choices made in Grade 9 and 10 — particularly academic versus applied science, and de-streamed Grade 9 math — determine which Grade 11 and 12 courses are available, and therefore which university programs are. These decisions get made by fifteen-year-olds on timetable forms, and they narrow quietly.
Grade 11 and 12 marks, which feed admission averages. Ontario universities generally calculate from six Grade 12 U or M courses with prerequisites locked in, which is why a single weak required course is expensive.
Reasonable expectations make the difference between support that works and support that gets abandoned in month three.
Expect an assessment first. Not a sales call — an actual look at what your child can and can't do.
Expect eight to ten sessions before judging it. Targeted gaps often close in that range. Marks move more slowly than understanding does, so watch for earlier signals: can your child explain something this month they couldn't last month? Is homework taking less time? Have they stopped avoiding the subject?
Expect to review rather than continue indefinitely. Open-ended arrangements that nobody reassesses are how families end up paying for a year of something that stopped being useful in month three.
Expect it to be about confidence as well as content. A student who has decided they can't do something will underperform what they actually know, and that belief usually needs addressing alongside the skills.
Most families pay between $30 and $100 an hour, with the rate driven mainly by the tutor's qualifications, the course level and whether sessions are online or in-home. Toronto sits at the higher end of Canadian rates, tracking the city's cost of living. Published figures vary widely because marketplaces, agencies and job postings are describing three different things.
Look for persistence rather than severity — a difficulty lasting a full term despite support at home and school is the signal, not a single bad test. Start by asking the teacher whether they see the same pattern in class, and check what free supports your board and the library already offer. Act sooner in math than in other subjects, because gaps there compound rather than sitting still.
For most students from about age 10 up, yes, provided the session is genuinely interactive rather than a video call. Online also widens your choice of tutor considerably, which matters most for senior math and sciences where the pool of qualified tutors is small. Younger children and students who struggle to focus on a screen generally do better in person.
There's no automatic requirement — the decision to request a vulnerable sector check sits with the hiring organization, which means an agency may require them while an independently hired tutor may never have had one. Ask directly whether the tutor holds a current check and who verified it. A reputable provider will answer immediately.
EQAO assessments in Grades 3, 6 and 9 are provincial snapshots with no effect on marks, credits or placement, and no pass or fail. The OSSLT, written in Grade 10, is a literacy test that forms part of the requirements for the Ontario Secondary School Diploma. Students who aren't successful on the OSSLT can rewrite it or complete the OSSLC course instead.
Toronto families navigate four publicly funded school systems plus a substantial private sector, and provincial data shows math as the persistent weak point — roughly half of Grade 6 students haven't met the standard for three years running.
If your child is struggling, talk to the teacher first, check what's free, and act sooner in math than elsewhere. When you do look for support, work out what's actually going wrong before choosing who fixes it. Talk to us about where your child actually stands — we'll assess it properly and match them with a certified teacher, in your home or online.
About the author
President of Tutorbright