To comply with the province’s Anti-Racism Act, the Ministry of Education mandates the collection of a student census. The voluntary, confidential survey data is compiled every other year, and this year, Jennifer McMaster, Superintendent of Education for The Northwest Catholic District School Board, shared the most significant changes and some unchanged data categories with the Fort Frances Times. The goal of the survey is to eliminate racism and advance equality.
“The Ministry of Education requires our school boards to run a student census every two years, and it’s to comply with the Anti-Racism Act,” said McMaster.
“After the survey is completed, we look at all of the responses from across our board and look at our report with the results to see what we may need to do to support students within our school board.”
McMaster said one big change from previous year’s survey results was students whose first language is not English. That increased by an order of magnitude.
“In 2022, we had one per cent of our student population who had learned a language other than English at home, and in 2024, that’s gone up to ten per cent,” said McMaster.
“[It’s] a very significant jump. We are having to address that with more multilingual language learner programs or English language learner programs at our schools.”
Tagalog, Ukrainian, French, Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic were among those identified. The number of newcomer Canadians also tripled in the census data.
“We’re getting students. From different French-speaking countries and different French dialects,” said McMaster.
“In 2022, three per cent of our students were born outside of Canada, and, in 2024, nine per cent of our students were born outside of Canada. We’re seeing an influx of new Canadians, and I think that’s represented even in our communities.”
McMaster said there was also a “significant shift” in the percentage of students who identified as white-only.
“In 2022, 65 per cent of our respondents identified as white-only as their racial identity, and that’s gone to 54% this year,” said McMaster.
“For example, our Black student population has gone from two per cent to six per cent, and Southeast Asian has gone from four per cent to eight point five per cent.”
One area that remained largely unchanged was those who identified as having a disability.
“[In previous surveys,] ten per cent of students or respondents identified as having one or more disability,” said McMaster.
“It was 11 per cent in the last survey.”
One new data point was the percentage of students who live with some sort of food insecurity.
“We had nine per cent of respondents that indicated there was not enough food in their home every day,” said McMaster.
“20 per cent indicated that they have made use of community provided food services, [like a food bank.]”
The ultimate goal of the survey is to bring culturally relevant materials to the curriculum, eliminate racism, and foster the notion of equality in schools.
“We have an obligation to respond in ensuring that we are working to have culturally relevant resources in our schools, and that we have the necessary language programmes and other supports for not just students who are new to our school, but new to Canada,” said McMaster.
“Our indigenous board action plan is what we use to kind of track and ensure that we’re getting the right services for success for indigenous identified students.”
