Did subnational governments’ educational responses to the pandemic significantly vary? Evidence from Canada
Anne Lachance, summarising a recent article in Regional & Federal Studies, examines whether subnational governments adopted significantly different education policy responses during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on four Canadian provinces: New Brunswick, Québec, Ontario, and Alberta. It analyses variation along two dimensions - the extent of reliance on remote learning and the stringency of in-school mitigation measures- over the period March 2020 to June 2021. The findings show substantial divergence, particularly in school closure duration and the balance between in-person and online instruction. These differences cannot be fully explained by epidemiological conditions or partisan ideology, and instead point to the importance of policy framing and the disruption of usual mechanisms of intergovernmental learning and expert consensus during crisis conditions.
This research examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected education in four Canadian provinces. It categorises their responses based on two criteria - the extent to which provinces relied on remote learning, and the stringency of the measures implemented in schools. The research shows that there was a significant variation in the policy measures implemented, especially when it comes to school closures. These differences cannot be brushed off because of variation in the number of cases and rather suggests that, in times of crisis, provincial policy responses tend to differ due to framing differences.
The literature on federalism in the pandemic is growing quickly but there are still many gaps to fill. As Carroll and colleagues show, most articles focus on the first wave of the pandemic, and few examine subnational policies. Among the Canadian analyses, Broschek argues that the provinces chose between two strategies, the containment strategy, which focused on tracking cases, and the mitigation strategy, which relied on hospitalization levels to guide policies. Boothe and colleagues focused on the reasons that explain school closures in Ontario and Alberta and demonstrated that decisions were not clearly based on epidemiology. This research expands on those findings.
Four provinces – New Brunswick, Québec, Ontario, and Alberta – were selected for this analysis. The case selection kept party ideology as constant as possible. The four provinces did not change governments throughout the period of study, and all were under conservative or conservative-leaning governments. The period under study was March 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021. To capture the policy variation, two main criteria were chosen. The first criterion highlights the extent to which provinces relied on remote learning (number of weeks of school closures as well as the provision of online education), while the second focuses on the stringency of the measures implemented in schools (strength of the mask mandate and social distancing measures). The data for this study comes from documentary analysis, and both government guidelines and local media articles were examined.
Policy responses in Canadian provinces
The pandemic hit the provinces with varying degrees of intensity but in all four the spread of covid-19 occurred in three identifiable waves – the first in the spring of 2020, the second in the early winter 2021, and the third in the spring of 2021. The first and second waves of the pandemic hit Québec hardest, while the third wave was strongest in Alberta.
In all four provinces, the initial response to the pandemic was to close schools in March 2020 and to offer online teaching. In New Brunswick, Ontario, and Alberta, schools were closed until the end of the school year. Québec’s response diverged from that of the other provinces in May. Parents could send their children on a voluntary basis to elementary schools in all regions except for Montréal and its surroundings. Online teaching was provided for other students. The social distancing measures were stringent. Class cohorts were created, and class sizes were capped to 15 students. Mask wearing, however, was not compulsory.
In the school year 2020-2021, the measures implemented varied more clearly. Ontario and to a lesser extent Alberta relied on online teaching, while Québec and New Brunswick emphasized in-person instruction. The stringency of measures also varied, with New Brunswick and Ontario being more cautious than Québec and Alberta.
In 2020-2021, Ontario implemented province-wide school closures for 12 weeks. Québec and Alberta had longer province-wide school closures for high school students (respectively 2 and 7 weeks) than for elementary school students (1 and 4 weeks). In New Brunswick, no province-wide school closures were implemented. In Ontario, in-person attendance was voluntary, while the other three provinces offered online teaching for students with medical exemptions only.
All four provinces implemented a mask mandate, but its strength varied. Ontario required students age 10 and up to wear face coverings in school at all times, while New Brunswick, Québec, and Alberta only required them to do so in common areas. All provinces moved towards a stronger mask mandate as the second wave took off.
Class cohorts, in which students are only in contact with their class group, were implemented in all provinces. New Brunswick capped class sizes for younger students (k-8) to 15 students but was the only province to do so. At the secondary level, Ontario and New Brunswick introduced a blended learning model, in which student years 9 to 12 attended in-person class on alternating days to guarantee social distancing. Québec followed suit later in the fall.
The evidence shows that there are measures that all provinces have implemented, such as the creation of class cohorts and the obligation to wear face coverings. However, there was variation in other policy measures, particularly regarding the balance of online versus in-class teaching and the stringency of social distancing measures. This study confirms the findings of Boothe and colleagues by showing that the policy differences cannot be completely explained by the level of cases. Case counts were highest in Québec in the spring of 2020 before elementary schools were reopened. Furthermore, Alberta had higher case counts per capita in 2020-2021 than Ontario, but kept its schools closed for shorter periods. Because the ideological orientation of the four governments was kept constant, this variation does not seem due to ideology.
Education policies in Canadian provinces have converged over the last decades. This convergence has been driven by different mechanisms such as lesson-drawing, as provinces have learnt from the experience of others, and problem-solving, as networks of policy experts built a consensus around the definition of educational problems and their solutions. During the pandemic, the mechanisms driving the convergence weakened. There is evidence that provinces did learn from the experience of others: Québec adopted the blended learning model in which students attend school on alternating days later than New Brunswick and Ontario. Furthermore, provinces that had a weak mask mandate moved towards a strong mask mandate. However, lesson-drawing was less prevalent due to the difficulty of learning from others’ policy choices in a short time frame.
Similarly, the mechanism of problem solving occurs over time, as issues are discussed by policy experts. During the pandemic, experts did not have the time to build a consensus. The analysis of the press coverage suggests that the solutions were framed in different ways in Canadian provinces, particularly when it comes to the benefit of school closures. In Québec, school closures were seen as causing harm to students due to lower access to food, and to the increase in mental health issues. In Ontario, opening schools was generally seen as putting children in harm’s way. The covid-19 pandemic therefore has not fostered the development of a common policy response in education, but rather several competing covid-19 management models.
This study’s contribution is primarily empirical. It shows that most of the policy variation occurred in the second and third waves of the pandemic and therefore provides us with a better understanding of what occurred. It also contributes to our understanding of the strategies of subnational governments and showed that some provinces prioritised reopening schools while others do not, as Québec and Alberta did so to a greater extent than Ontario. These choices mattered since prior studies showed that school closures influence educational equity.
Anne Lachance is an Assistant Professor at the École des hautes études publiques of Université de Moncton, in New Brunswick, Canada. Her research focuses on educational and social policy changes.
Note: this blog represents the views of the author, and not those of Regional & Federal Studies, the Centre on Constitutional Change, or the University of Edinburgh. It summarises this article from the Regional & Federal Studies blog.
Image details: FACE School, Montreal. Credit: D. Benjamin Miller via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC0.
