You are invited to participate in a survey of principals across Canada designed to understand the state of resources and programs and to track the impact of policy and funding changes in public schools across Canada.

People for Education is a non-profit research organization and a champion of publicly funded education. The Centre for Leading Research in Education (CLRiE) is a interdisciplinary research centre at Wilfrid Laurier University. Survey co-Directors are Dr. Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, Associate Professor and Dr. Christine Corso, Postdoctoral Fellow at Laurier, working with a team of researchers from People for Education, CLRiE, and other Canadian universities.

In this online survey you will be asked questions about the state of resources in your school. There are no questions that ask for information about individuals. The online survey will take about twenty minutes to complete. We expect approximately 2500 participants in this first year of the survey. We plan to use this data in a series of reports and infographics, as well as possible academic articles, to engage media and the public in conversations about how public education contributes to a stronger Canada and the impact of policy on schools.

All data are kept confidential (except as required by laws regarding the abuse and neglect of children) and stored in conjunction with TriCouncil recommendations for the safeguarding of data on a password-protected drive. After analyses are completed, your personal information will be removed and the data will remain securely and confidentially stored, identifiable by school, for long-term analysis of resource and policy trends. To enable long-term analysis, we will store the data indefinitely. Non-sensitive data may be stored in a public repository, while to sensitive data (i.e., anything that could identify a school) will be controlled by the research team and only be granted for projects designed to strengthen public education.

Risks, benefits, and incentives: There are no significant risks to participating in this survey. We understand that as a principal you are very busy and reflecting on challenges that you are facing in your school may cause you additional stress. The benefit to participating in this study is that you will be able to give voice to your school’s experience. Based on principal surveys in the past, People for Education has been able to advocate for and achieve policy change. Participants will also be entered into a draw to win a $100 gift card for their school. One winner will be drawn in each province or territory and the draw will be conducted after the survey is closed. The winner will be notified by email in February.

Your participation is entirely voluntary. An asterisk (*) indicates questions that are mandatory for the analysis of our survey, which are limited to questions about the school’s name and contact information. We use this information to remove you from our mailing lists and to re-contact you in the case that we need to clarify your responses. All other questions are completely optional. You may discontinue completing the survey at any time and only your responses to that point will be saved. If for any reason you decide you wish to withdraw from the study you can contact [email protected] until January 16 to request your data be deleted.

If you have any questions about the survey, you may contact the survey team at [email protected] or Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, principal investigator, at [email protected]. You might also find answers to your questions on our survey FAQ page.

This project has been reviewed and approved by the University Research Ethics Board (REB# 9310). If you feel you have not been treated according to the descriptions in this form or your rights as a participant in research have been violated during the course of this project, or if you have any questions for the board, you may contact Jayne Kalmar, PhD, Chair, University Research Ethics Board, Wilfrid Laurier University, +1 548 889 3518 or [email protected].

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