This survey was an initiative of the Collège Sturgeon Heights Collegiate Safe School Committee. This committee was looking for meaningful data to give them some feedback as to what extent students felt safe in their school and also were looking for areas where they may take a more proactive role. Students, resource teachers, guidance counselors and the school‚Äôs principals and vice-principals had input in drafting the survey.
On Wednesday, April 16th, a Safe School Survey was sent out to all students to complete during their Life Choice class. The survey was divided in two parts. The first part was a multiple choice survey consisting of 49 mechanically scored questions and the second part consisted of students indicating on the map the areas in the school and in the community if applicable where they may not feel safe. The following is a brief summary of the key points of the 536 surveys that were returned to the office.
In the survey, 90% of respondents indicated feeling safe to very safe in the classrooms, 79% felt safe in the cafeteria and 80% felt safe going to and from school. This survey revealed that 67% of our students had never been bullied in school, and of those that had been bullied, 37% had reported being bullied in the last year. This indicates that 12% of our students felt that they were a victim of bullying in the past year.
Although 76% of our respondents indicated having tried alcohol, only 31% had reported using illegal non-prescription drugs.
The final question asked students to what extent they felt safe in their school with 76% responding that they felt somewhat safe to very safe in the school.
An area of particular concern is the response to question #5 where 34% of the students indicated that if they had information that affected the safety of people in the community, that they would not share this information. When asked if school staff showed concern for students who are being bullied or harassed, 48% of respondents disagreed or remained neutral. Further to this, when asked whether the school code of conduct made the school a safer place to learn, 63% disagreed or remained neutral. 42% of respondents were neutral or disagreed with the statements that they knew what would happen if a student were caught using or selling drugs on school property.
Students were also asked to identify areas of concern on the school map as well as the community map. The area where students go to smoke on the edge of school property was identified 289 times; the east doorway area was identified 64 times followed by 33 in the power mech area, 31 in the gym and 27 in the welding areas. It is important to note that the new addition that has not been open to the public yet was mentioned 33 times. This may reflect that students do not feel safe in an area under construction where many tools and hazards abound. This could then explain the higher numbers in the power mech and welding areas that do have many tools and present hazards to students not practicing safe work habits. On the survey, we simply asked students to indicate where they did not feel safe, but we did not
define the word safe. This does leave the results up to interpretation.
The responses to areas where students did not feel safe in the community indicated that the mall at the corner of Moray and Ness was identified 107 times and the mall at the corner of Sturgeon and Ness came up 96 times. The forest behind the school was identified 47 times and the Skate Park West, 39 times. It would be interesting to note that over 200 maps were returned with no areas being marked as unsafe.
At the present time, the results will be share with the school staff as well as with the Safe School Committee. Each will have an opportunity to provide input to actions that they would like to see implemented in order to increase the extent to which students feel safe in the school. The survey will also be discussed at the May 14th, Parent Advisory Meeting. There are plans to repeat this survey during the next school year so as to measure the effectiveness of the interventions put in place as a result of these consultations.
View the survey results here. |
