Parents not worried about return to school, poll finds
Sixty per cent of Quebec respondents OK with it, more than any other province
Compared to other Canadians, Quebecers are the least worried about children returning to school in the fall amid the pandemic, a poll published Tuesday suggests.
And, unlike people in other provinces, Quebec respondents were less keen on requiring masks in schools and reducing class sizes.
Those are some of the findings of a survey conducted by Léger and the Association for Canadian Studies.
Only 33 per cent of Quebecers said they were worried about children going back to school at the end of the summer.
Sixty per cent said they were not worried.
That’s the opposite of what the poll found across Canada.
SHOULD CHILDREN WEAR MASKS IN SCHOOL?
Twenty-eight per cent of Quebec respondents said they should be worn all the time at school and on school buses.
That’s in contrast to national results, which show 41 per cent think masks should be worn in schools and on school buses.
The current public health advice is that non-medical masks can hold back infectious particles on the wearers’ breath, reducing the risk of contagion from people with COVID-19 who might not know they’re carrying the illness.
HOW MANY CHILDREN SHOULD BE ALLOWED IN INDIVIDUAL CLASSROOMS?
Forty-four per cent of Quebecers said normal class sizes should be in effect.
Nationally, only 23 per cent of respondents want classes to resume at full capacity.
The Léger online poll of 1,524
Canadians over age 18 took place July 17-19. The poll cannot be given a margin of error because it is not a random sample.
Léger vice-president Christian Bourque said support for masks at school may increase as more jurisdictions adopt mandatory mask measures.
He said social norms are already changing, noting the similarity in numbers between poll respondents who said they support masks at schools and those who said they wear masks when they go to grocery stores.
“The more we consider this potential for making the mask mandatory, the more parents will probably find that the mask should be mandatory as well,” Bourque says.
“The social norm that we should be wearing the mask will only go up the closer we get to the actual start of the school year.”
Even those who say they’re not worried are likely to have some concerns, such as that an asymptomatic child might pass the virus on to a grandparent, Bourque said.