Advocating for a child’s right to an education should not feel like an uphill battle! Yet for some families navigating school exclusion across British Columbia, every step of the process can seem designed to delay, deflect, and deny necessary support.
When schools fail to meet the needs of students—particularly those with disabilities or diverse learning requirements—families are often left to pick up the slack, providing additional accommodations at home.
This places an overwhelming workload on households, as children return home exhausted from unsupported school days, often struggling with basic tasks. Families bend beyond their capacity to make up for the gaps left by schools—providing structure, teaching missing skills, and advocating for their children in a system that seems more invested in status quo.
What is Exclusion?
Exclusion does not always take the form of a formal suspension or expulsion. Instead, students—particularly those with disabilities—may experience informal exclusion in ways that are not always documented, such as:
- Being asked to stay home or leave school early
- Having shortened school days imposed on them
- Being barred from field trips or school activities
- Being denied attendance due to a lack of health or personal care support
- Being removed from their classroom rather than provided with appropriate accommodations
- Not receiving the necessary supports or accommodations to participate in learning, resulting in missed class time
- Facing isolation, seclusion, or restraint in school settings
Each of these forms of exclusion disrupts a child’s education, often forcing families to take on extraordinary efforts to compensate for the lack of support.
For a child, time moves differently. A week without proper support in school isn’t just seven days—it’s a widening gap in their education, a lost opportunity to build confidence, and a mounting sense of failure. When a child is excluded from the classroom, whether outright or through a lack of accommodations, they don’t just fall behind academically; they lose access to critical developmental windows, moments when learning should be clicking into place but instead slips further out of reach. Each day spent waiting for bureaucratic processes to unfold is a day where frustration deepens, skills stagnate, and self-worth erodes. By the time a solution finally arrives—if it ever does—the damage has often already been done. Then families are trying to navigate the same systems with trauma, which can make advocacy even more difficult.
The Complaint Process
When schools fail to uphold their responsibilities, families are expected to navigate an escalation process that is often unstructured, inaccessible, and slow. Parents must first attempt to resolve the issue informally with the school. If that fails, they can escalate the complaint to the School Board through a formal appeal.
In theory, legislation mandates that school districts must resolve complaints within 45 days (Section 11 of the BC School Act). However, in practice, families frequently encounter delays, deflections, and dismissive responses from administrators. Rather than engaging in meaningful problem-solving, schools sometimes present non-solutions—such as an unsolicited suggestion to transfer schools—that fail to address the core issue.
When the same institution responsible for the problem is also in charge of investigating itself, accountability becomes performative rather than meaningful.
If districts fail to meet the 45-day appeal timeline, parents can file a complaint with the BC Ombudsperson, the oversight body responsible for ensuring public institutions follow fair procedures.
Yet, if the Ombudsperson itself cannot follow up quickly, families are left without any means to push for a reasonable resolution timeline. This creates a dire accountability barrier, where systemic failures are acknowledged but not addressed in time to make a difference for the students affected.
This isn’t just a bureaucratic delay—it’s a structural failure of accountability. When oversight mechanisms move at a pace that benefits the institutions under scrutiny rather than the families seeking justice, they cease to function as effective safeguards. Delayed justice isn’t justice—it’s complicity in systemic failure.
The Ombudsperson’s Investigation
The BC Ombudsperson has launched an investigation into the exclusion of students from classrooms and schools in the K-12 public education system. This investigation aims to determine whether these exclusions are fair and will result in a public report with recommendations for change.
The BC Ombudsperson is currently collecting information from families whose children have faced school exclusion. They have launched a confidential online questionnaire, allowing parents to share their experiences.
📌 Families can participate by filling out the questionnaire here or calling 1-800-567-3247 for more information.
Why This Matters
Education is a right, not a privilege. No child should be excluded from school simply because the system is failing to provide appropriate support. While some school districts have policies in place, many families report that these processes are difficult to navigate, slow, and ineffective.
Accountability mechanisms like the Ombudsperson’s investigation are critical—but only if they result in actual enforcement and reform. Public education must be accessible and equitable, and when systemic failures are identified, the response should be solution-oriented rather than defensive.
For families who have experienced school exclusion, sharing their stories is a powerful step toward change. But systemic change requires more than just documentation—it requires real consequences for institutions that fail to meet their obligations and a commitment to ensuring that all children receive the education they are entitled to.
