The Ontario government is looking to make school boards more accountable for how they spend funds allocated to English as a second language programs.

Ontario hands out $225 million in ESL funding to school boards across the province every year, but the funds can be used at their discretion.

CBC News has learned that Queen's Park is getting ready to release a new policy that will take aim at improving accountability, as well as the delivery and quality of ESL programs.

As it stands, school boards struggling to balance their books can use some of the money to help pay other bills.

Allowing that kind of creative bookkeeping has to stop because it comes at the expense of some of the most vulnerable students in the school system, said ESL Resource Group of Ontario co-chair Neil McGrath.

"Until the ministry dedicates that fund, you know boards will continue to do that simply because they are allowed that latitude," said McGrath.

York Region District School Board officials say it is one of the few boards to spend all ESL grants on the programs and are calling on others to do the same.

"The pattern in the province has been that many boards have chosen to use those funds for other things, and the natural consequence of that is that the new English language learners in the province have not been appropriately well-served," said the board's chair, Bill Crothers.

According to the draft policy obtained by CBC News, ESL funding from the Ministry of Education will be for the "direct benefit" of English language learners.

Education Minister Kathleen Wynne has confirmed the government is developing a new policy for ESL, but wouldn't say whether boards will be forced to allocate ESL grants to those programs. The policy will be put into place in time for the new school year in September.

"We all believe it should be spent on English as a second language," said Wynne. "How that's done, in exactly what way and what the programs are — there has to be some local input into that, so that's what we're sorting out right now."

The policy changes come in response to a 2005 report by Jim McCarter, the province's auditor general, into the effectiveness of ESL programs.

On average, about 17,000 immigrants of school age who speak little or no English have moved into Ontario every year since 2000, with most settling in the Greater Toronto Area or other large cities, according to the report.

One of the recommendations coming out of the report was to require school boards to report where money for ESL grants was going and, if reallocated to other programs, how that affected the ESL students.