Some Grade 8 students continue to be streamed into high school courses that close the door to university with little guidance or understanding about how their choices may affect their futures.

That’s one of the troubling findings of a new report that captures the voices of youth and reveals how they end up choosing Grade 9 courses that have significant consequences down the road.

Children barely in their teens are too young to make such important choices, and often do so without enough information or help from middle school staff who understand the implications, says the report, released Thursday by the research group Social Planning Toronto.

“Without the maturity and support to fully grasp the weight of these decisions, some students are unknowingly following a path which inhibits them from reaching their full potential,” the report says.

Among its findings:

During middle school, youths and their parents didn’t understand the difference between courses in the “academic” stream, which are required for university-bound students, and the more hands-on “applied” classes. Many assumed applied courses were the mainstream route;

Students recognized they were ill-equipped to make decisions about applied versus academic Grade 9 courses, but said there was nowhere to turn for help. Often middle schools don’t have enough access to guidance counsellors or other one-on-one supports from staff with proper training to give advice;

Students believed they could transfer from applied to the more demanding academic courses later, even though statistics show that rarely happens, and the steps required to upgrade aren’t easy to navigate;

Both students and parents—who relied on what their children told them— need much more information and support about course selection before students get to high school.

The prevalence and impact of streaming—which the province vowed to end in 1999—has been well-documented in previous reports.

The point of this study was to present “real case studies” of how and why it happens during the critical transition to high school by describing the experiences of students and parents, said Sean Meagher, executive director at Social Planning Toronto.

It detailed the experiences of 39 youths aged 15 to 19 from at least half a dozen schools, and 13 parents of other high school students. All are from Weston-Mount Dennis, a diverse, high-needs Toronto community.

“This gives us one snapshot in one neighbourhood of how streaming works, but those case studies are examples of things that are happening all across the province,” Meagher said.

Streaming places Grades 9 and 10 students into academic and applied courses based on their perceived ability and presumed post-secondary goals. Which stream they end up in affects their options for the final two years of high school and, in turn, eligibility for post-secondary education.

The practice has come under increasing fire because of its well-documented impact on Black students, youths from poor neighbourhoods and other marginalized groups who are overrepresented in the applied stream.

A York University study last spring found Black students are twice as likely to be enrolled in applied courses compared to students from other racial backgrounds.

Over the past few years, a handful of Toronto District School Board schools, including Runnymede Collegiate and C.W. Jefferys Collegiate, have tried to reverse the trend, launching de-streaming pilots that gradually eliminate applied courses for their Grade 9 students and instead integrate them into one academic stream.

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This year, Oakwood Collegiate became the first school to end applied options for all Grade 9 courses.

The report’s findings echo what Andre Harriott, 23, observed during his years at Vaughan Road Academy in Toronto, which closed earlier this year.

“Most of my friends were in applied and didn’t see themselves at all as academic,” said Harriott, a peer researcher for the study who interviewed teens and parents, and who recalls the distinct divide between applied students who felt stigmatized and those in the academic stream.

“I saw the negative effects on their self-esteem and how it polarized the school,” he said.

Harriott says he’s lucky because his own parents, who didn’t attend post-secondary institutions and wanted their son to have more opportunities, were involved in his education and pushed him to choose courses that would keep his options open.

He is currently in his first year of a Masters program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and hopes to become a high school teacher.

The new research is important because it provides insight into students’ real experiences, says Harriott.

“A really important part of this project was giving students a voice — having them speak about their experience and brainstorm solutions.”

Meagher said that while the study’s sample size was small, he hopes it will highlight barriers faced by many middle-school students, and the importance of postponing choices that could limit their options down the road, even by a couple of years.

“Middle-school students are really quite young, and their perspective on the world is much more oriented around elementary school and the world they know,” he said. “By the middle of high school, students start to think about a bigger world and what it’s going to mean for them.”