Overall, the kids are all right at the Near North District School Board.
Every two years, the Board conducts an anonymous survey to gauge how students are feeling about their school experience, with an emphasis on feelings of security and safety. The provincial government mandates this to occur at least every two years.
The survey is voluntary, and the data helps “promote a positive school climate,” explained Superintendent Gay Smylie, as the results can help focus resources to remedy certain issues. Teachers, staff, and parents can also participate in the survey.
For instance, most students responded positively to the survey statement “I feel like I am a part of the school community.” Younger students felt more positively, and “as students age, we see this number decrease,” the board’s report detailed. “Creating an even larger variety of clubs, teams, and initiatives for our secondary student population will be an area for further growth.”
See: Student survey helps school board support ‘equity learning’
Although provincially mandated, the Ministry of Education does not set out a list of questions to include on the survey. Each board creates their own questions. For this past survey, the board asked respondents to rate their reaction to the following statements: My Participation at School, My Relationships with Peers, My Relationships with Adults, and My Learning Environment.
Further, respondents reacted to these statements as well: My Physical Safety, My Emotional Safety, Transportation, Bullying, Discrimination and Cyberbullying, and My Coping and Emotional Skills. The rating scale offered: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Agree, or Strongly Agree.
Just under 4,000 grade 4 to 12 students participated, along with 299 staff, and 557 parents.
“This kind of quantitative data gives us information about students’ lived experiences as it refers to their relationships with peers, adults and their learning environment,” noted Emily Samuel, Principal of Safe Schools for Early Years. The results also give insights into “how they feel, their physical safety, their emotional safety” and insights into bullying activities within the hallowed halls.
The data allows administrators, educators, and the Safe School Teams – every school in the board has one – to “dive deeper so we can pinpoint actions that principal and school teams could use to really make a difference,” Samuel added.
Samuel also detailed that the collected data enables the board to pinpoint potential problem areas to specific age groups, grades, and schools. For instance, if older kids in grades five and six feel they have close connections amongst their peers, whereas grade four students feel less connected, staff can focus on those grade fours to make them feel more included.
The findings have been released to the principals and will help to guide the coming school year. The complete survey can be found on the Near North District School Board’s website, within the September 10th agenda meeting package, on page 16 of that document.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
