Almost 40 per cent of Ontario parents will not let their children return to school in fall, poll finds

The poll also stated that 74 per cent of Ontario parents prefer Christine Elliott, the province's health minister to make the decisions around reopening schools rather than Stephen Lecce, Ontario's education minister

Nationalpost.com
August 19, 2020
Devika Desai

About four in ten Ontario parents do not want to send their children back to school in September, and a vast majority -- 74 per cent -- have lost faith in the education minister’s ability to ensure that schools are safe from the threat of COVID-19, a new poll has found.

The poll conducted by Maru/Blue surveyed Ontario parents with children in elementary and secondary schools. Of those who plan to keep their children home, 78 per cent do not think it’s safe for them to return, and 75 per cent are concerned that they might contract COVID-19 and infect family members.

“It’s very clearly about health and safety,” said John Wright, the firm’s executive vice-president. “We’re dealing with a pandemic with an invisible pathogen that can have a huge swath of afflictions, which we’re seeing in the United States.”

Nearly 70 per cent of parents keeping their children home feel that schools have not made enough modifications to ensure student’s safety. Almost 65 per cent feel that classroom sizes are too big and that their children won’t be able to physically distance from their peers.

But if four out of ten students do stay home, that could substantially reduce class sizes. For example, a class of 25 could shrink to 16 students, on average.

While 62 per cent of parents do intend to let their children return to school in September, fewer than 30 per cent thought it was safe to do so, and only 27 per cent said they trust the provincial government. Instead, the majority of parents cited their children’s need for social interaction or inability to learn online as reasons to send them back to school.

The lack of public confidence in school boards and the Ontario government could stem from a number of reasons, Wright said, including the fact that officials are giving conflicting advice.

Parents “don’t really trust anything they’re hearing,” he said. And many think that the back-to-school plan should be a matter of health, not education.

It's very clearly about health and safety

The poll found that 74 per cent of parents want Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott to be in charge of the back-to-school plan, while only 26 per cent of those polled were comfortable with Education Minister Stephen Lecce’s leadership.

“When people say its absolutely critical to get our kids back to learning … that’s only half of it,” Wright said, emphasizing the need for safety. “If (education and health) are decoupled, then you have a significant problem.”

Parents might also be worried about a political agenda, Wright said, given that the government has clashed with unions over funding.

Just under half of parents keeping their kids home said they wanted to wait and see how schools reopen before deciding to let their children return.

Wright said he expects most parents who send their children back to school will be wary.

“And if something happens, they’re going to pull their kids out immediately,” he said. “A lot of it comes down to the individual child and how they can traverse this situation with their own health and the health of others in mind.”

The survey was conducted among 761 randomly selected parents of elementary and secondary aged students in Ontario who are members of Maru/BLUE’s online panel between Aug. 14 and 17 and has a 4.1 per cent margin of error.