January 24, 2018

Majority of Nova Scotians believe Bill 75 harmed public education

Two-thirds of Nova Scotians believe the government imposing a contract on teachers has had a negative impact on the public education system according to a CRA poll commissioned by the NSTU in November.  Only nine per cent of those surveyed feel Bill 75 has had a positive impact on public education, while 21 per cent say it has had no impact at all.

A variety of reasons for this perception include teachers not being happy or satisfied, believing teachers are now less inclined to lead extra-curricular activities, lack of bargaining in good faith, lack of resolution of the issues, poor treatment of teachers, and teacher being over-worked and lacking support.

Similarly 74 per cent of Nova Scotia say the current government has done only a fair or poor job of managing Nova Scotia’s public school system, compared to just 22 per cent who feel the government has done an excellent or good job. Polling from the last quarter of 2017 continues to confirm Nova Scotians negative assessment of the performance of the provincial government in managing the public education system.

Of those surveyed, 80 per cent hold a favourable opinion of public school teachers in Nova Scotia.

“This data was collected while Avis Glaze was doing her research and suggests that the decisions of the current government are harming the public education system,” says NSTU President Liette Doucet.

CRA interviewed 401 randomly sampled Nova Scotians from November 9 to November 29, 2017 for the survey. Overall results are accurate to within 4.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.