Northern Ontario disproportionately affected by decline in arts education, survey finds

New survey results from a public education advocacy group show that access to arts education in Ontario schools has fallen significantly over the past decade – and northerners are among those most affected. 

Just 14 per cent of northern Ontario elementary schools that responded to the People for Education survey have music teachers – compared to more than 60 per cent in central Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area.

"The difference is enormous in that way," said Annie Kidder, the executive director of the organization.

"It continues to surprise me that, seemingly, policymakers and politicians – I don't know – don't seem to care that there is this difficulty for the north."

Northern schools tend to be smaller and more spread out, making it harder to fund specialist teachers, Kidder said.

But people seem to have simply accepted that northern schools will have less, she added. 

People for Education surveyed every school in Ontario to ask about students' access to music teachers, choirs, school bands and other opportunities, Kidder said. 

Around 1,200 schools responded – a response rate of 20 to 25 per cent.

Key findings:

Particularly alarming, Kidder said, was the fact that schools in more affluent neighbourhoods were more likely to offer arts education, while students in lower income areas were deprived of it.

"They have more capacity to fund what now have become extras," she said..

"And that, along with – there are also geographic differences – is really, really worrying in terms of that inequitable access to the arts."

Kidder blamed the decline in arts education on a rising back-to-basics mentality that prioritizes core subjects such as reading, writing and math over others.

"Sometimes what happens in a trend like that is that we start to think of the arts as an extra or a frill," she said.