Compensatory Education in Saskatchewan: Making Up for Lost Services

An Inclusion and Intervention Plan was in place. The school agreed to provide EA support for three hours per day. Or speech-language services twice a month. Or small-group literacy instruction. And then — for months, maybe for a full school year — it didn't happen.

When that gap finally surfaces, parents often ask: what about everything my child missed? Is there any way to recover what was lost?

The concept is called compensatory education. It refers to additional services — beyond what a student's current plan requires — requested to address a period when services in the plan were not delivered. Understanding what Saskatchewan's framework does and does not establish helps parents know what to ask for and on what basis.

Saskatchewan Has No Federal IDEA Mechanism

The term "compensatory education" originates in American law. Under the US Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), there is an established legal remedy requiring districts to provide additional services when they fail to deliver a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). Canadian provinces, including Saskatchewan, have no equivalent federal statutory remedy.

This does not create an automatic Saskatchewan entitlement to compensatory services. A parent can ask for additional supports through the Board review process or raise disability-discrimination concerns with the SHRC, but the outcome depends on the facts and the applicable process.

Two Possible Routes to Ask About Additional Services

Ground 1: The Section 178.1 Formal Review

Under Section 178.1 of The Education Act, 1995, parents have the right to request a formal review by the Board of Education when they disagree with a decision about their child's educational program. A sustained failure to implement an IIP can be raised as part of the record about the program the student received.

When filing a Section 178.1 review request, parents can ask the Board to address what additional supports, if any, may be appropriate for the period of non-implementation. Section 178.1 provides a formal review mechanism, but it does not guarantee a compensatory award.

Ground 2: Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission complaint

The Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, 2018 provides another route. When a school division fails to implement an IIP for a student with a disability, that failure may raise a duty-to-accommodate and disability-discrimination issue.

The SHRC can investigate and pursue remedies through its process, including addressing discriminatory practices. Its 2023 systemic investigation into reading disabilities involved 29 families and eight school divisions; that report does not establish a general entitlement to compensatory services or binding structural changes for every individual complaint. Document the failure and harm, then ask the Commission what remedy or next step is available for the specific facts.

What "Services Not Delivered" Actually Looks Like

One of the most common patterns documented by Inclusion Saskatchewan is the quiet erosion of IIP services over time. The IIP says EA support for four hours per day. But the EA assigned to your child's classroom was reassigned to cover another student's behavioral crisis. Or the division's SLP position was vacant for half the year. Or EA hours were cut with no written notice.

The December 2025 Inclusion Saskatchewan exclusion report found that an estimated 1,250 to 1,350 students with disabilities in Saskatchewan were excluded from full-time school during the 2024-2025 academic year — roughly one in every nine students identified as having intensive support needs. Some of these students were attending for as little as 30 minutes per day. The services they missed during those months may be relevant to a request for additional services, depending on the facts and the process used.

Wait times for school-based speech and language assessments routinely exceed six to twelve months in Saskatchewan. When an SLP service is specified in an IIP but not delivered for a full academic term because the position is vacant, that record may support a request for additional services or a complaint, depending on the facts.

Building Your Compensatory Claim

A compensatory education claim, whether pursued through Section 178.1 or the SHRC, requires documentation of three things:

1. What was promised (the IIP). Pull out the IIP and identify every specific service commitment: frequency, duration, who was responsible for delivery, and the measurable goals attached to each service. If the IIP is vague on these details, that vagueness itself is part of the problem — adequately written IIPs require measurable goals and specified service delivery.

2. What was actually delivered. Request records under The Local Authority Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (LA FOIP). Submit a written request to the school division's Privacy Officer asking for: your child's attendance records, EA assignment logs for your child's classroom, SLP service logs, and any documentation of IIP implementation reviews. The $20 access fee applies; the division must respond within 30 calendar days. If records don't exist — if the division cannot produce logs showing EA coverage — that absence of documentation may be relevant, but does not by itself prove a claim.

3. The educational impact. A request is stronger when it ties the service failure to a measurable gap in progress. If the IIP specified that speech-language services would be delivered to improve expressive language to a specific benchmark by Term 3, and the services weren't delivered, and the benchmark wasn't reached, those facts may help document impact.

What to Ask For

When you frame a compensatory education request, be specific. Generic requests for "additional services" are easier to deny. Specific requests are harder to refuse:

• Ask whether additional SLP sessions during the summer program or the following school year could address missed sessions
• Ask whether the division will fund private tutoring or SLP services from a qualified external provider for a defined period
• Ask whether an extended EA allocation in the subsequent year is appropriate beyond what the current IIP specifies

Private educational consultants in Saskatchewan charge an average of $38.08 per hour. If your child was denied EA support for a semester and you secured private tutoring to cover the gap, document the actual expense as part of your request.

When Schools Push Back

The most common administrative response to a compensatory education request is that the division "did its best with available resources." Courts and tribunals rarely accept mere budgetary constraint or administrative inconvenience as sufficient justification, but the facts of the accommodation analysis still matter. Ask the division to explain the resources and alternatives it considered.

If the division's response is inadequate, escalate to the SHRC or contact the Saskatchewan Advocate for Children and Youth (SACY), which has the mandate to investigate situations where a child's rights through the Ministry of Education are being ignored.

The Saskatchewan Special Ed Advocacy Playbook includes the LA FOIP request template, the Section 178.1 review letter, and the SHRC complaint framing guide — documents that can help you build a documented request for additional services and a response through the appropriate process.

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