BARRHEAD/WESTLOCK - Though general satisfaction with the quality of education offered in Pembina Hills remains very high, the responses to the school division’s annual satisfaction survey demonstrated a higher level of discontent among parents and a noticeable hit to everyone’s sense of safety while at school.
Those were some of the overall takeaways from the 2022 Satisfaction Survey results, which were presented to Pembina Hills School Division trustees (and later accepted for information via a motion) during the April 27 board meeting in Barrhead.
Director of education services Raime Drake said the annual perceptual survey, which is conducted in December and January, offers a snapshot as to how students, staff and parents are feeling about the division at a particular time. The Pembina Hills satisfaction survey allows the division to “drill down” and gain some local context, she said.
While school staff and Grade 4-12 students complete the survey online, parents are sent an e-mail with a direct link to the survey at the addresses they provided during registration.
Notably, the period in which the survey is conducted was strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, as students stayed at home for an additional week following the Christmas holidays and absenteeism among students and staff was high throughout January.
“We were having a lot of difficulty collecting student and staff data,” said Drake, adding that student and staff participation were down seven and six per cent respectively.
Board chair Judy Lefebvre suggested the division should make more of an effort to reach out to parents who can’t complete the survey due to the lack of an e-mail address, though she acknowledged their responses might not be different than what was presented to the board.
Response themes
The survey data was presented to trustees under several major themes, the first being satisfaction with leadership.
When asked about satisfaction with school administration, the responses of staff and students were consistent with the previous year, but there was a drop in satisfaction among parents due to the very polarized views of division policies around COVID-19 protocols, which Drake noted was “very much expected.”
The dissatisfaction among parents was also demonstrated in a question about opportunities to contribute to decision-making, with students and staff remaining static but parents’ responses indicating a 10 per cent increase from 2022-2021.
Finally, while satisfaction with the community’s involvement in student learning increased among students, it noticeably decreased by several percentage points among parents and staff.
Under the theme of satisfaction with instruction, assessment and inclusion, there were again some areas where parent responses ticked downward.
Parent satisfaction regarding extracurricular opportunities, for instance, took a hit, as satisfaction among students rose from about 85 to 90 per cent, while satisfaction among parents decreased from about 85 to 80 per cent.
Satisfaction with communication about student progress also declined amongst parents from about 90 to 85 per cent, and as a result, the division is looking at common reporting practices and the language used therein.
This was backed up with a comment by Lefebvre, who noted that at a recent school council meeting, a parent complained that when dealing with several different teachers at a school, they all had different ways of reporting student progress.
“It creates a lot of confusion for those parents. So that’s another area that could be looked at,” she said.
Under the theme of a safe and welcoming learning environment, staff and student responses were fairly static from 2021 to 2022 when asked if their school was safe and caring, but responses among parents dropped slightly.
When asked if they feel safe in all areas of the school, there was a significant drop in satisfaction among all stakeholders, said Drake.
The exact reasons why varied from school to school, said Drake, “but strikingly, a lot of the comments were, ‘I don’t feel safe anywhere that’s not my own house.’”
Interestingly, when asked if they perceive students encouraging others to follow the rules, satisfaction among staff dropped from around 92 per cent to 85 per cent. Drake suggested this might have to do with staff fatigue with having to remind students about wearing masks.
When asked about their feeling of safety on the buses, the percentage of parents indicating their child felt safe dropped from 94 per cent in 2020-2021 to 89.6 per cent this year, while the percentage of students indicating they felt safe decreased from 89.2 per cent to 87.6 per cent.
While this might relate to the collision between a Pembina Hills bus and a logging truck last fall, as well as the increase in inclement weather days, Drake suggested that as a former principal, she was aware that a lot of 99 per cent of discipline issues started on the bus.
Finally, under the theme of satisfaction with the overall quality of education, satisfaction with program choice was static among students but dropped several percentage points amongst parents, likely due to some programs being unavailable due to COVID-19.
However, overall satisfaction among parents came in at 97.1 per cent, while staff indicated 100 per cent satisfaction with the quality of education and students reported a 98 per cent level of satisfaction, which Drake noted was good to hear.
