The Better Together Report and PEI's Inclusive Education Action Plan Explained

If you have been trying to understand why PEI's special education system feels so inadequate — why there are not enough EAs, why the waitlists stretch for a year or more, why students are sometimes sent home because no one knows what to do with them — the Better Together report is the document that officially confirmed what parents already knew.

Published by the PEI Department of Education and Early Years, Better Together: A Review of the Inclusive Education Model on PEI is the province's own formal assessment of where its inclusive education approach broke down and what needs to change. Reading it is both vindicating and sobering — vindicating because it documents failures that parents have been describing for years, and sobering because the report acknowledges that the full implementation of its recommendations is expected to take approximately three years.

For families with children in school right now, that three-year timeline is not abstract. It is the period during which your child is navigating a system in transition — one that has identified its failures but has not yet fixed them.

What the Review Found

The Better Together report, commissioned in the context of PEI's 2016 shift to an inclusive education model, delivered a frank assessment of what the province's inclusive education system actually looks like in practice.

The system is HR-dependent and reactive. The report explicitly describes the inclusive education model as heavily dependent on human resources — specifically, on the availability of Educational Assistants, resource teachers, and specialized consultants. When those resources are stretched, the system does not degrade gracefully. It fails individual students in ways that are often invisible to the broader administrative hierarchy. Schools operate reactively, mobilizing support when a situation reaches crisis point rather than proactively structuring environments that prevent crises.

There is no adequate continuum of placements. Inclusive education, as a principle, is sound. But inclusion requires a range of supports — from full classroom participation to more intensive structured environments — to be meaningful. The report found that PEI's alternative education programming is not conceptualized or funded as a permanent option. The result is that students who cannot succeed in a standard classroom either end up in informal arrangements (waiting in resource rooms, being sent home) or are placed in environments where they are overwhelmed and unable to learn.

The repeal of the 2001 special education directive left a policy vacuum. In 2016, the province repealed the Minister's Directive on Special Education (MD 2001-08), which had provided structured guidance on roles, responsibilities, and frameworks across the school system. The Better Together report explicitly noted that since the repeal, the system has critically lacked a clear framework for who is responsible for what, at the Department level, the school branch level, and the individual school level. That policy vacuum has contributed directly to the inconsistency families experience between schools and between school years.

Teachers are overwhelmed. The report uses the phrase "teaching in desperation" to describe what classroom teachers experience when they are expected to meet the needs of students with complex behavioral, medical, or cognitive needs without adequate EA support, specialist consultation, or alternative placement options. This is not a character failure — it is a structural one.

Undocumented removals are a systemic pattern. The Office of the Child and Youth Advocate, responding to the issues raised in the Better Together review, documented a clear pattern of students with complex needs being removed from mainstream classrooms informally — sent home for partial days or placed indefinitely in resource rooms — without formal suspension proceedings. These removals deny students their statutory right to education without triggering the procedural protections a formal suspension would require.

The Inclusive Education Action Plan

In response to the Better Together review, the PEI Department of Education and Early Years released an Inclusive Education Action Plan designed to address the gaps identified. The Action Plan is organized around several priority areas:

Clearer roles and accountability. The Action Plan commits to developing explicit frameworks for the roles and responsibilities of the Department, the PSB and CSLF, individual schools, and classroom practitioners — the vacuum the 2016 repeal created.

Building a continuum of supports. The Action Plan acknowledges the need for a broader range of placement options and support structures for students who cannot thrive in a standard mainstream classroom. This includes developing short-term and longer-term alternative programming that is properly resourced and funded.

Workforce development. Additional funding for training classroom teachers in evidence-based behavioral intervention and inclusive pedagogy, along with increased access to specialized practitioners such as behavior analysts and occupational therapists.

Improved data systems. Better monitoring of student outcomes, intervention efficacy, and the distribution of specialized resources across schools.

Early identification and support. Strengthened connections between early childhood services and the school system to identify students with complex needs before they enter Kindergarten without a support plan in place.

What This Means for Parents Right Now

Here is the honest reality: the Action Plan is real, and some of its commitments are being implemented. But implementation of a comprehensive reform takes years, and funding flows unevenly. The Better Together report was a diagnosis. The Action Plan is a treatment plan. Neither one gets your child the support they need next Monday morning.

What both documents do give you is a powerful advocacy tool. When school administrators tell you that PEI is doing its best within the inclusive education model, you now know that the province's own independent review found that best to be structurally inadequate. When a principal says the system "doesn't have the resources" for what your child needs, the Better Together report confirms that the resource shortfall is a systemic failure — not a legal justification for withholding legally mandated accommodations.

The duty to accommodate under the PEI Human Rights Act does not wait for the Action Plan to be fully implemented. It is operative now. The system's ongoing transformation does not suspend your child's rights.

Use the Better Together findings to contextualize your advocacy. Reference the OCYA's confirmation that informal removals are legally problematic. Reference the report's acknowledgement that the system is "reactive" rather than preventative as grounds for demanding proactive planning in your child's ALP. Reference the Action Plan's commitments when advocating for specific resources — ask the school which Action Plan components have been implemented in this school year.

The Structural Change That Still Hasn't Happened

The most significant outstanding gap from the Better Together process is the absence of a robust continuum of placements. The Action Plan acknowledged the need for alternative programming options for students who cannot access learning in mainstream classrooms — but building that continuum requires new funding, new facilities, and policy decisions about what alternative programming actually looks like in PEI's small-province context.

Until that continuum exists, parents of students with the most complex needs will continue to navigate a system where the only formal option is the mainstream classroom, and the de facto alternative is informal exclusion. Knowing this dynamic — and knowing that it has been identified as a systemic failure by the province's own review — gives you a clearer picture of what you are up against and why advocacy requires persistence.

The Prince Edward Island Special Ed Advocacy Playbook is built around exactly this reality: a system with good intentions, clear legal obligations, and significant structural gaps. It provides the practical tools to navigate that gap — not to wait for it to close.

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