Universal Screening Falls Short Without Ability to Address Identified Needs
The Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS) welcomes the Manitoba Human Rights Commission’s Right to Read report and strongly supports its goal: every child in Manitoba deserves the opportunity to become a successful reader. However, this right cannot be achieved without significant new investments in public education.
“Teachers share the Commission’s commitment to ensuring every child can read,” said MTS President Lillian Klausen. “But once needs are identified, those needs must be met. Right now, there simply aren’t enough clinicians, resource teachers, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, and other supports in our schools to give children the help they deserve.”
Klausen said that while universal screening and early identification are vital steps, they are only the beginning of a much larger process.
“Screening without support is just a diagnosis without treatment,” she said. “To fully achieve literacy equity, the public education system must be funded to provide the professionals, resources, and time teachers need to deliver meaningful interventions.”
MTS also cautions against the use of a single, mandated commercial screening tool or program to assess students, warning that such an approach risks both narrowing practice and opening the door to privatization within public education.
“When governments hand over essential parts of student learning to a single private company, public dollars are diverted away from classrooms and into corporate hands,” Klausen said. “Universal screening can be an important tool, but it must be teacher-led, transparent, and adaptable to students’ diverse needs. Most importantly, it must include a clear plan to ensure that the identified needs are met in a timely manner that can be accessed across the province.”
The Society further warns that literacy success cannot come from imposing one model of instruction across all classrooms.
“There is no single way to learn how to read,” Klausen said. “Children bring different backgrounds, strengths, and challenges to the classroom. Effective teaching draws on multiple evidence-informed strategies. There is no one-size-fits-all formula. Phonics is one important tool, among many, but it cannot replace professional judgement or the need to meet every student where they are.”
MTS emphasizes that Manitoba’s literacy challenges are rooted in years of underfunding and staffing shortages, not a lack of teacher knowledge or effort.
“Teachers are trained experts who understand how to adapt instruction for diverse learners,” Klausen said. “What we need are smaller classes, time for collaboration, access to specialists, and funding that is both predictable and equitable — funding that allows schools to build strong literacy supports from the ground up and to maintain them.”
MTS is calling on the provincial government to pair the Right to Read recommendations with sustained investment in:
• Smaller class sizes that take class complexity and composition into account.
• Expanded and timely access to clinicians and specialists, including psychologists, speech-language pathologists, resource teachers, and reading intervention staff.
• Culturally responsive, inclusive literacy resources.
• Ongoing, teacher-led professional learning and time to plan interventions.
“Every child deserves the right to read,” said Klausen. “Government must ensure that once a student’s needs are identified, they can be met. Without that investment, the ‘right to read’ risks becoming a promise on paper instead of a reality in our classrooms.”