The Lambton Kent District School Board (LKDSB) says recently-released census data will help it understand the needs of students, and shape the way it develops future programming.
The 'Count Me In LKDSB' student census was conducted between March 1 and April 8, 2022. It was the first time it had been required by the Ministry of Education.
The document asked nine questions, including things like race, spoken languages, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation and whether they are living with a disability.
Students in grades nine to 12 answered the questions themselves (at a rate of 34.3 per cent), while parents did the census on behalf of elementary-aged children (at a rate of just 5.3 per cent).
LKDSB Director of Education John Howitt said they have to be careful not to draw too many conclusions given the low participation rate.
"In secondary, we did have a higher return rate," said Howitt. "We probably are approaching sufficient participation that we can draw conclusions and generalize about our student body based on the data. On the elementary side, we need to be a bit more cautious with the lower participation rate. We need to make sure we aren't generalizing the entire population based on that. That said, we gleaned significant information from those who participated. As an example, on the question about language spoken in the home, we had a number of languages that were added under the 'other' category that weren't included in the drop down list. It was a real eye-opener for us, the number of languages that are spoken in our students' homes."
Some examples include Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, Japanese, Romanian, Turkish, Swahili and Nepali.
Howitt said they're hoping to achieve higher participation rates in the future, and noted that this was a learning process.
"Running the census just coming out of the pandemic, and the students just being in school, it was not an ideal time," he said. "We also, to ensure it was being completed and completed confidentially, it was a two step registration process. Some people didn't know where to find their Ontario education number that was found on the report card. So, we did have some learnings. It was a good starting point, and we would expect to have a higher participation rate in the future."
All of the data can be viewed here:
While the Education Ministry has not set out a timeline for a future census, the LKDSB is looking at doing another one in the fall of 2024.
