BC Teachers Views of Poverty and Education

2012 Poverty and Education Survey: A Teacher’s Perspective

This report from the BC Teachers’ Federation presents the results of a survey asking BC teachers questions related to the impact of poverty and its connection with education. About half of the teachers said they believed 25% or more of their students deal with poverty problems. Around two-thirds of middle and secondary grade teachers reported that they have students with attendance gaps because they take care of younger siblings (72.6%), because they do not have access to transportation (63.2%) or due to their sick or disabled parents (64.2%). Groups of recommendations made by teachers include: providing more support to deal with learning gaps, dealing with poverty issues with more funding for education, attacking poverty’s root causes, and raising awareness in government of the issues at hand. 2012 Poverty and Education survey: A teacher’s perspective: Overview of the findings https://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/SocialJustice/Issues/Poverty/Research/ Overview_of_the_findings.pdf