A strong majority of Canadians support separate schools for arts and vocational-based training, and for students with special needs, but most do not support other kinds of separate schooling, according to a new poll.
An Ipsos Reid poll conducted for Global News indicates that eight in 10 Canadians support arts or vocational schools, where students might focus on a particular fine-arts field or train in a skilled trade in addition to regular curriculum requirements.
Arts and vocational schools are helping to fill gaps in certain kinds of employment while still creating well-rounded students, said John Wright, Senior Vice President of Ipsos Reid Public Affairs. “The mark that they’re getting is almost 8 in 10 and they’re worth it. They’re great institutions.”
Special-needs schools are also widely popular, according to the poll. Seventy-six per cent of Canadians support separate publicly-funded schools for students with special needs.
“You have sensitivity to students with specials needs because only the public sector really is a vehicle where we can get this because parents can’t afford it anywhere else,” said Wright.
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But Canadians do not support all kinds of separate schools. Only a slim majority (56 per cent) supports language-based schools.
Only four in 10 Canadians support faith-based schools within the public school system. Even in Ontario, which has provincial funding for both public and Catholic schools, only 43 per cent of people agree that separate faith-based schools should operate within the public school system.
Even less popular are gender-based schools, which only have 31 per cent support among Canadians. Only in Quebec do a majority of people support the idea of separate schools for boys and girls. That is a legacy of the older Catholic school system, said Wright.
The least popular separate school is race-based. Only 10 per cent of Canadians support race-based schools. Only 11 per cent support these in Ontario, which has one established Africentric school in the Toronto area and a second opening this school year.
“When you get to gender or visible minority status and things like that people say that this is more of a moral issue than a teaching issue,” said Wright.
“I think that’s why you get those differences. It’s an acknowledgement that the public system actually supports parents who can’t afford special needs and they’d rather have it invested there, whereas the other things seem optional.”
For this poll, a sample of 1,569 Canadians from Ipsos’ Canadian online panel was interviewed online. Weighting was applied to ensure that the sample was representative of Canadian population demographics. A survey with an unweighted probability sample of this size and a 100 per cent response rate would have an estimated margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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