ONTARIO PREMIER DALTON McGuinty’s aim of halving the current

high school dropout rate by 2010 is commendable, but it remains to be seen whether it’s also achievable.

A key part of the plan, announced this month by Education Minister Gerard Kennedy, is legislation that will require students to stay in school until they reach the age of 18, up from the current 16.

If the rules aren’t followed, students would be forced back to their desks or sent by court order to alternative learning programs, Mr. Kennedy said. If that fails, a student might rarely be ordered to spend time in a detention centre where instruction would be mandatory.

Under the current law, enforcement is left to the student’s parents. If they fail to enforce a child’s attendance, they face a maximum fine of $200.

Ominously, New Brunswick — the only province that has thus far raised the early-leaving age to 18 — has apparently had no success in lowering its own dropout rate.

The Ontario government’s apparent intention is to use a carrot-and-stick approach, by combining the later leaving age with the introduction of some new programs aimed particularly at those regarded as otherwise most likely to become dropouts.

Ontario’s current dropout rate is said to be 30 per cent, but thus far we’ve seen no indication of how that figure was determined, let alone detailed statistics that might disclose differences between individual schools or school districts.

In a speech to a Liberal policy conference in Huntsville, Premier McGuinty stressed that the plan isn’t “to incarcerate young people because they fail to continue to learn.

“Our plan is to engage young people by providing them with an exciting opportunity that strikes them as a real win for themselves,” he said. “I believe in the carrot, not the stick.”

He said his government hopes to introduce the required legislation next year, following a pilot period that’s scheduled to begin next month.

The premier said this educational initiative is expected to cost the government about $70 million a year and would affect more than 25,000 students.

Clearly, if the plan works, it will be eminently affordable, costing the province’s 11 million residents roughly $6 a year initially but in all likelihood providing plenty of paybacks in terms of lower unemployment, greater productivity and less juvenile delinquency.

“We can’t hang our hopes on the future if we’re content to let the future just hang out at the mall,” Mr. McGuinty said.

The government’s plan seems to represent a change in emphasis, if not direction, from those of its immediate predecessors.

Back in the days of the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves Conservative governments, the perceived crisis was in achievement, with fingers being pointed at allegedly substandard teachers and poor curricula. The emphasis was on province-wide testing that would at least demonstrate, and hopefully one day solve, the problem.

Perhaps the dropout problem ought to be given a little historical perspective.

Bad as the loss of nearly one-third of the students who had entered grade 9 might be today, we think it once was a lot worse in some schools. In fact, historians can no doubt point to high schools in the 1950s that had Grade 9 classes of more than 50 students but barely half that number in Grade 12 and even fewer in Grade 13. And that was in an era when university education was foreclosed to those who lacked passing marks in at least eight Grade 13 departmental examinations.

In those days, many farm families felt a Grade 10 education was all that was really needed, and a university degree was almost beyond contemplation.

Today, life is a lot more complex, and jobs for the unskilled are a lot fewer. Accordingly, there is a clear need to find ways of ensuring that every student in our school systems does a lot more than simply keep attending classes. The objective must be to ensure that each and every student receives the education best suited to his or her needs and aspirations.

To this end, one of the toughest challenges facing the education system is finding out soon enough just what are the desires and capabilities of each student, and whether those desires can be achieved.

One problem we keep hearing about the “streaming” system now in place is that too many students capable of entering an academic stream choose instead to take a technical stream as seemingly a course of less resistance, only to realize too late that they have prevented themselves from entering a particular career path.

After all, universities have long recognized that many high school graduates still haven’t a chosen career path, and offer first-year course that can become the doorway to many different specialties.

In the circumstances, it would seem that effective guidance counselling and aptitude testing will take on increasing important roles in our schools.

Mr. McGuinty says the students will soon get more hands-on learning through new co-op programs and diplomas that let them specialize. He wants to make high school “more relevant, more engaging” so teens can take courses and join co-op programs of greater interest to them. Specialized diploma programs could cover subjects from computers to the hospitality industry, technology, business, construction, music and other arts while still requiring students to take core subjects like math.

Mr. Kennedy, calls the plan a “fairly dramatic change” to the way schools operate.

In addition, course links will be sought with universities so students can earn credits toward their high school diploma and university degrees at the same time. The first new courses and programs are to be operated on a pilot basis early in the new year, with more coming next fall.

Obviously, this plan will have plenty of challenges and will likely cost more than forecast. But it’s surely worth a try.