Nova Scotia’s school support staff have been pushing for the provincial government to address urgent issues in our public school system.
This includes understaffing, high workloads, and safety for students and workers. All of these issues impact the quality of education our kids receive.
We want to see policies that ensure a thriving public education system, and that includes a safe and supportive learning environment for students, and a safe and supported working environment for school support staff.
Safe Staff, Safe Schools
Violence continues to be a prevalent issue in public schools and continues to disproportionately affect school support staff. Our members continue to report daily incidents of violence since the start of the 2025-2026 school year, with a definite negative impact on long-term mental and physical well-being.
Right before the start of the 2024-2025 school year, CUPE school support staff released a report on the topic of violence in public schools across Nova Scotia.
Our objective in putting together this report was to support the school communities we serve every day in understanding the scope of this issue. This includes other workers, and parents and families of students.
School support staff experience the majority of violent incidents in public schools. As both education workers and workers on the front lines of this issue, we offered recommendations which have yet to be fully addressed.
These include:
- Improving compensation and staffing levels for school support staff
- Improving training for staff
- Removing barriers to reporting incidents
- Improving data collection and analysis
- Stop excluding school support staff from participating in the development and implementation of strategies, policies and programs to address violence in schools
Download the Safe Staff, Safe Schools report.
Preventing and Addressing Violence in Public Education
Before we released our Safe Staff, Safe Schools, the Auditor General of Nova Scotia released a bombshell report that confirmed the crisis level proportions of this issue. Recommendations in this report have also not been implemented. These include:
- Creation and implementation of a provincial violence prevention strategy, including staffing considerations
- Clarification of the program planning process for students with exceptionalities (students with special needs), including consultation with Educational Program Assistants/Teaching Assistants (EPAs/TAs) and other workers with relevant expertise (also of note is that the province’s policy on Special Education has not been updated since 2008).
- Updating the current mechanisms for addressing violence—the recently updated Code of Conduct and Guidelines for Managing Unacceptable Behaviours minimize the effects of violence through reframing (student is just blowing off steam) and or denial of violence or injury because of a student’s age.
- These changes are completely inadequate for addressing the current crisis of violence in schools and are seen by school communities as a step backwards. They ignore and negate the psychological, emotional and physical toll on victims, and shift the focus of this issue to recognizing “unacceptable behaviours” of students instead of recognising the occupational health and safety risks. Any policies or practices addressing this issue should involve Joint Occupational Health and Safety committees and ensure compliance with occupational health and safety legislation.
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