Policy 322 New Brunswick: What the Inclusion Law Actually Requires

The school tells you your child is included. They're in the regular classroom. Policy 322 says that's how it should be. Everything is fine.

Except your child isn't getting the support they need. The EA was reassigned. The resource teacher has 40 kids on her caseload. Your child sits at the back of the room with a modified worksheet while the teacher runs the lesson for everyone else.

This is technically "inclusion" under Policy 322. And it's also a violation of Policy 322. The gap between those two sentences is where New Brunswick parents spend years of their lives.

Understanding what the law actually says — not what the school says it says — is the only way to use it as leverage.

What Policy 322 Is

Policy 322 (Inclusive Education) is a directive issued by the New Brunswick Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. First established following the province's Bill 85 inclusion mandate in 1986 and reaffirmed in 2013, it governs how students with disabilities and complex needs are to be educated across all New Brunswick public schools.

Policy 322 is not aspirational language. It contains specific, non-negotiable operational mandates that school principals and district administrators are legally required to follow.

The core principle: students with disabilities must be educated in local schools, in regular classes, with children of their own age, supported by evidence-based practices.

What Policy 322 Explicitly Prohibits

This is where many parents are surprised. Policy 322 doesn't just describe what should happen — it prohibits specific practices outright.

Segregated self-contained programs are banned. The policy explicitly forbids segregated or self-contained programs or classes for students with learning or behavioral challenges, whether located in the school building or at community-based learning sites. This applies regardless of the severity of a student's needs.

Alternative education programs are prohibited for K-8 students. Alternative education programs — settings other than the mainstream classroom — are strictly prohibited for students in kindergarten through grade eight. Alternative sites exist only for high school grades, and provincial advocacy organizations like Inclusion NB actively monitor to ensure this restriction is maintained.

The "common learning environment" is mandatory. Principals must ensure each student participates fully in a common environment designed for all students. This must be supported by Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and multi-level instructional strategies. Physical presence in the classroom is not enough — the policy mandates meaningful participation.

This last point is critical for parents whose children are technically "included" but practically isolated. A child sitting in the corner completing modified worksheets with an EA while the class lesson proceeds without them is not meaningfully participating in a common environment. That arrangement violates Policy 322's spirit and is legally challengeable.

What Section 12 of the Education Act Requires

Policy 322 is the operational framework. Section 12 of the New Brunswick Education Act is the statutory foundation — the law that gives the policy its legal weight.

Section 12(1) mandates that a Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) must be developed for a student if the superintendent, after consulting with qualified persons, determines that the student's physical, sensorial, cognitive, social-emotional, or other needs require it. This is not discretionary. If the need is identified, the plan is legally required.

The Education Act defines what a PLP must accomplish: it must specifically and individually identify practical strategies, goals, outcomes, targets, and educational supports designed to ensure meaningful success for that student.

Section 12 also establishes that exceptional students must receive special education programs and services in circumstances where they can participate with their chronological peers in the regular classroom, "to the extent that is considered practical, having due regard for the educational needs of all pupils." The "practical" qualifier is the source of most disputes — schools use it to justify limits on support, and parents use the overall framework to challenge inadequate implementation.

Section 27 adds another layer: the classroom teacher holds the primary responsibility for the educational progress of all students in the class, including exceptional students on PLPs. Educational Assistants play a supportive role — the licensed teacher, not the EA, is legally responsible for the child's learning. This matters when a school tries to define "inclusion" as an EA doing all the work.

How the Governance Works (and Why It Creates Gaps)

The Minister of Education sets policy. The district superintendents execute it. That separation creates the most common source of systemic failure.

The province can mandate full inclusive support — and does. But the actual determination of student exceptionalities, the allocation of EAs, and the hiring of specialized staff are the operational responsibility of district superintendents. Districts are constrained by rigid provincial funding formulas that are calculated based on the previous year's data, not current need. A student who arrives in October with complex needs may have no EA budget available for them until the following September — because the budget was set before they enrolled.

This is not a loophole. It is a structural flaw in the funding model that was explicitly identified in the EECD's own 2021 Moving Forward review of Policy 322 and remains unresolved. The province mandates inclusion; the districts ration the resources required to make it real.

Recent legislation has made this more complicated. Bill 46, debated between 2023 and 2025, converted the Anglophone District Education Councils from executive bodies into advisory bodies, centralizing more power at the provincial level in Fredericton. For parents, this means systemic grievances about underfunding are increasingly a provincial-level political fight rather than a local one.

The Staffing Crisis Underneath Policy 322

No honest account of Policy 322 can ignore the staffing context in which it operates in 2026.

The Anglophone school system had only six school psychologists serving approximately 70,000 students as of early 2024 — against a government-estimated need of 40. That's roughly one psychologist for every 11,600 to 13,000 students. Wait times for public psychoeducational assessments in the Anglophone sector routinely stretch 18 to 24 months.

The Francophone sector has a significantly healthier staffing ratio — near capacity with only four psychologist vacancies province-wide — allowing faster PLP development and better early intervention.

According to a 2023 report by the provincial Child, Youth and Senior Advocate, one in every 200 students is chronically absent specifically because "the school cannot or will not educate them." These are overwhelmingly students with complex needs for whom the underfunded inclusive model cannot provide adequate support.

Policy 322 guarantees a seat in the room. It does not guarantee the resources to make that seat meaningful.

What Policy 322 Requires of the School — Specifically

If your child has a PLP, or if you're fighting to get one, these are the non-negotiable obligations Policy 322 places on the school:

The PLP team must include you. You are not a guest at the PLP meeting; you are a required participant. You have the right to bring a support person — a friend, an advocate from Inclusion NB, or any other representative.

You must receive the PLP document. The school is required to give you a copy of the plan and to report on your child's progress against PLP goals on the same schedule as report cards are issued.

Your private assessments must be considered. If you've paid for a private psychoeducational assessment — which at approximately $225/hour and 12-15 hours of clinical time typically costs $2,700–$3,200 in New Brunswick — the school is legally required to fully discuss, analyze, and consider those findings before making any decision about your child's program or placement. They cannot demand you get a private assessment, but they cannot dismiss one you submit.

The plan must be implemented by the classroom teacher. Not delegated entirely to an EA. Section 27 places primary responsibility with the licensed teacher. If the classroom teacher is not implementing the plan and the EA is doing all the work, that is a compliance issue.

Consent is required. You must provide written, informed consent for the PLP to be implemented. If you sign without understanding what you're agreeing to — particularly whether the curriculum is being accommodated (same outcomes) or adjusted (modified outcomes) — that is a problem the school should have prevented.

How to Use Policy 322 When the School Falls Short

When a school is not meeting its Policy 322 obligations, you need documentation and a clear escalation path.

Start with a written request for a PLP review meeting, citing specific concerns. Put it in writing so it's timestamped in your child's file. If the school is restricting your child to partial days, know that Policy 323 limits partial day arrangements to 90 days maximum as a last resort — not a default response to resource shortages. The provincial Child, Youth and Senior Advocate has publicly categorized repeated partial-day dismissals without equivalent learning alternatives as an illegal exclusion.

If the school is unresponsive, the appeal mechanism under Section 11 of the Education Act exists specifically for placement disputes: written appeal to the superintendent within ten days of the decision, escalation to the District Appeals Committee if needed.

The New Brunswick IEP & Support Plan Blueprint provides the step-by-step advocacy tools — including template communications and escalation scripts — built around exactly these legal obligations.

The Bottom Line

Policy 322 is one of the most progressive inclusion mandates in North America. It is also one of the most chronically underfunded. The law gives you real, enforceable rights. The system's resource constraints mean those rights require active, persistent assertion.

Knowing what the law requires — in specific, quotable terms — is the foundation of every effective advocacy conversation you'll have with your child's school.

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