Ontario high school students who drop out won't be allowed to get their driver's licences until they turn 18, under proposed legislation.

The aim is to encourage students to stay in school until they're 18, so they can graduate. Roughly 45,000 Ontario high school students, or 30 per cent, leave each year before graduating.

The province hopes to cut that number in half by 2010.

(courtesy Ontario Ministry of Transportation)

Education Minister Gerard Kennedy said students applying for their licences would have to show a document to the Ministry of Transportation that proves they're an active student.

Kennedy says the penalty will come into effect once schools establish a wider choice of courses and add more co-op and apprenticeship programs to keep at-risk students in school.

"The licence provision is a proactive way of setting the bar, the marker, that avoids the courts, allows us to deal with it as something people will come to accept – that it's a privilege to have a driver's license and one of the corresponding obligations is to be serious about taking your learning as far as possible," said Kennedy.

But NDP education critic Rosario Marchese calls the plan a bad idea. "In my view, if a student needs to leave for economic, academic, emotional or social reasons they will find it a punitive way to hold students in school."

Marchese says more supports for troubled students should be put in place instead.

This isn't the first time such a strategy has been used. There are nine U.S. states that require high school attendance to receive a driver's licence and 10 that suspend licences for truancy and academic problems.