"We need to look at how to help kids to stay in the system to get their education. That's my interest," Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said in an interview. "I think a focus on safety that looks at getting kids out of the system is not the right way to go."

Recently released province-wide numbers show 149,167 students, or 7.03 per cent of all students attending Ontario schools, were suspended in 2004-05, up from 145,426, or 6.84 per cent, a year earlier.

Mandatory suspensions last from one to 20 days.

The same data, the most recent available, show a slight decline in expulsions to 1,888 in 2004-05, down from 1,908 in 2003-04. Nearly 90 per cent of expulsions are limited in that they ban a student from attending their home school for between 20 days and one year. The remaining 10 per cent are full expulsions that forbid students from attending any school in the province unless they first volunteer to participate in a program designed to address their problems.

The numbers represent a dramatic increase over the 109,406 suspensions and 106 expulsions in 2000-01, the year before the previous Conservative government introduced mandatory suspensions or expulsions for infractions ranging from threatening bodily harm or swearing at a teacher to possession of a weapon, robbery or assault. Authorities are granted some leeway in applying the rules in certain cases, such as where students do not have the ability to control their behaviour.

The Liberal government's changes are expected to expand the discretion authorities have in dealing with difficult students and to make alternative programs for students more widely available in a bid to reduce the dropout rate.

A special report on the Safe Schools Act delivered by Liberal MPP Liz Sandals has also recommended that principals be relieved of their power to hand out limited expulsions.

"If you are going to sever a student's right to education, there has to be the quasi-judicial process of a board hearing," Sandals said Friday. Permanent expulsions already require school-board approval.

Conservative MPP Frank Klees accused the Liberals of trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist.

"Anyone who cares to examine the act will know full well that there are opportunities for alternative programs, that there is a great deal of discretion in terms of how expulsions are applied," he said.

"This has very little to do with content and everything to do with photo-ops and perception. What the minister needs to do is send a directive out to principals and school boards, and instruct them to ensure that the Safe Schools Act is implemented in the spirit in which it was intended."

The act has come under fire on a variety of fronts.

Concerns that minority and disabled students are disproportionately singled out for harsh punishment, for instance, led to a 2005 deal between the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Toronto District School board whereby the board agreed to take into account mitigating circumstances before suspending and expelling students and to try to ensure they can keep learning while they are out of class.

Race-based statistics are not available province-wide, but numbers show 20 per cent of suspended and 22 per cent of expelled students have behavioural, intellectual, physical or other problems.

Some critics have pointed to the wide range of suspension and expulsion rates across the province and have suggested some boards are using the Safe Schools Act to get rid of difficult students.

In 2004-05, for instance, five boards had suspension rates of more than 15.1 per cent while 17 had rates of below five per cent.

That same year, 10 of Ontario's 72 boards did not expel any students, while the 75,000-student Ottawa-Carleton District School Board once again topped the list at 0.346 per cent, or 259 students.

The Ottawa rate was down from the year before, but it was still far greater than any other board.

The Toronto District School Board, for instance, is the largest in the country with 278,000 students and expelled 275.

That's not to say, however, that Ottawa students are a bad lot.

"There's some discretion when it comes to whether one uses limited expulsion or longer suspensions," Ottawa-Carleton board executive superintendent Diane Jeudy-Hugo said in an interview.

She says the board chooses limited expulsions because the Safe Schools Act allows it to require that students take drug treatment, anger management or other programs as a condition for returning to class. Such conditions cannot be imposed on suspended students.

"We've used them (mandatory expulsions) for the right reasons," Jeudy-Hugo said. "It's very important to work with the student in terms of having a re-entry plan, so that when the student comes back they stand a better chance of being successful."

CanWest News Service

FACT BOX: Board-by-board data: 2004-05

- Toronto District Board of Education

Suspensions: 15,555 or 5.59 per cent

Expulsions: 275 or 0.099 per cent

Total student population: 278,147

- Ottawa-Carleton District School Board

Suspensions: 4,460 or 5.95 per cent

Expulsions: 259 or 0.346 per cent

Total student population: 74,897

- Greater Essex County District School Board

Suspensions: 3,564 or 9.11 per cent

Expulsions: 14 or 0.036 per cent

Total student population: 39,111