Public attitudes toward education in Ontario 1979: Second OISE survey

Abstract

This second OISE/UT survey finds that the growing crisis of the Ontario education system in the late 1970s is reflected in the public's low overall assessment of educational services. In the late 1970s, only a minority has been satisfied with various specific aspects of public education or has perceived any improvement in education. Over the 1978-79 period, even general satisfaction with the school system considered in its most abstract terms has declined markedly to include only a bare majority of the public, so that the overall public assessment of educational services may well be at a post-war low. The crisis and the associated decline in the general level of satisfaction with the existing educational services also appear to have led to an increasing tendency among the Ontario public to rank educational concerns as first-order priorities for public funds. Among major policy areas, only health and medical care is regarded as a higher priority by the general public. In this context of growing dissatisfaction with education and a consequent increasing relative priority for improving educational services, the public's general curriculum objectives are quite clear. There is widespread support for a broad range of curricular goals to be pursued in schools. But, without reducing the range of objectives, the public definitely want basic reading, writing and number skills given top priority at and elementary level, and in increasing proportion, also want occupational preparation emphasized at the high school level. The survey looks at: the relation of education to other public priorities, the public's overall assessment of education, curricular goals, sex education, French language instruction, school organization, school and work, educational finance, the politics of education, and declining enrolment.