New survey to ask Edmonton public students their race, ethnicity, gender identity

Edmonton Public Schools will ask more than 76,000 students to complete a survey this fall querying their race, religion, ethnicity, gender and Indigenous identity.

Students in Grades 4 to 12 will complete the first-time questionnaire, and students in Grades 7 to 12 will also be asked about their sexual orientation.

It's part of the division's commitment to be more anti-racist, spurred by advocates asking the school board to collect race-based data.

"Different students have different experiences, and one of the things we do know is that not all students experience success at school," assistant superintendent Kent Pharis told reporters on Friday. "Not all students feel welcome at school."

Nancy Petersen, a managing director with the school division, said after the board committed publicly to examining the racial makeup of its student body, they looked at school jurisdictions that already do this. They decided it would be advantageous to look beyond race and ethnicity, she said.

"If we want every child to walk through the door every day and feel welcomed and feel a sense of belonging, we need to have a better sense of who students are," Petersen said.

Schools can begin offering the survey starting next week, officials said. Teachers will first give students an orientation session on how to complete the computer-based questionnaire.

Petersen was adamant that school-based staff will not have access to the data, which will be stored in central division servers and accessible only by a small team.

But once the data is collected, analysts can use it to identify correlations, such as, how many Black students were suspended or expelled from school compared to their classmates or how many Indigenous students dropped out of school.

Parents can opt their children out of the surveys, and students can skip whichever questions they choose.

A letter to parents is available in 16 different languages.

Some Ontario school divisions have conducted such surveys for years, which helps them identify and address inequities in schools, Petersen said.

In 2020, Edmonton public was the first Alberta school division to commit to collecting the information.

Expanding the scope of the survey has some critics.