Overall, it appears the parents of Catholic school students are very satisfied with the division’s performance.
The School Board received the 2015-2016 Parent Satisfaction Survey from the Christ the Teacher Catholic Schools (CTTCS) administration at the board’s regular meeting February 8.
In the survey, 268 respondents overwhelmingly gave the school high marks in four “Dimensions”, Faith Formation (8 statements), Student Learning (8 statements), School Climate (11 statements) and Communications (5 statements). The survey asked parents to rank each statement with Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree or Strongly Disagree.
No statement on the survey received a lower grade than 82 per cent of strongly agree and agree. The lowest ranking 82.09 per cent was to the statement “My child receives regular feedback on how to improve his/her work” in the Student Learning dimension. For that statement 220 of 255 parents agreed or strongly agreed.
The top ranking statement was from the Faith Formation dimension. To the statement “God’s word and Catholic beliefs are celebrated through daily prayer and religious celebrations at my child’s school,” 98.88 per cent strongly agreed or agreed.
Chad Holinaty, superintendent of education for the division, said they are pleased with the positive results, but just as grateful to have feedback on what they can do better.
“Overall, there’s lots of positives, especially compared to other years and especially in the dimension of Faith Formation,” he said.
“That’s a huge priority for us, but also there is room for improvements. One area that stood out was the last quadrant on communicating with parents, particularly on how their children are doing and how they can improve.”
The survey also included a section dedicated to bullying. Parents were asked to respond Never, Once or Twice, About Once a Week or Several Times in a Week to statements such as “My child has been repeatedly ignored, left out or otherwise socially bullied.” Each of these statement had a corollary asking parents to report if their child was doing the bullying.
Although very few were answered about once a week or several times a week, the number of kids being bullied “once or twice” was quite high, particularly for the statement “My child has been repeatedly ignored, left out or otherwise socially bullied,” to which 59 parents, or 22.01 per cent answered once or twice.
Holinaty said that is a cause for concern and action.
“It’s always an ongoing concern for us,” he said. “The positive is that we are making progress in getting feedback about it.”
The survey is conducted every three years.
