Arts funding
and school budgets
Until recently, there was no provincial funding
dedicated to the arts. School boards can determine how much funding they
allocate to schools for the arts. In some cases, boards allocate money for
specific arts initiatives or instructional priorities. For example, some boards
provide instrumental music for all students in grades 7 and 8, and will
therefore provide some funding to schools for instruments. Other boards provide
an instructional budget based on the amount of full-time equivalent (FTE) music
specialists at each school.
In addition to board funding, schools can fundraise
for things like arts excursions, visiting artists, or musical instruments.
Together, the funds raised by the school and allocated by the board contribute
to a school’s arts budget for the year.
In 2018, People for Education asked elementary and
secondary schools about their arts budget. Among elementary schools, these
budgets range from under $500 to as high as $20,000 (see Figure 1). At the
secondary level, arts budgets can reach as high as $100,000.
Arts budgets: Size matters
Both the data and the comments from our survey
illustrate the impact of school budgets on access to resources and learning
opportunities in the arts. One principal commented that “many instruments sit
broken until budgetary bottom lines are determined closer to the end of the
year. Even then, not all instruments can be repaired because there is not
enough money.”1
Another noted that it is “very difficult to keep up with maintenance and
replacement costs”2
associated with their instruments.
To understand the impact of arts budgets on
students’ opportunities to participate in arts enrichment, we examined the
difference between elementary schools with the highest and lowest budgets –
those under $500 and over $5000. Figure 3 shows that larger arts budgets have a
significant impact on arts learning opportunities for elementary students.
In elementary schools,
the arts budget also appears to be connected with the availability of arts
programming space. Elementary schools with an arts budget of $5000 or greater
have, on average, three times as many types of specialty arts rooms as those
with arts budgets under $500.
Among secondary schools,
there is a correlation between higher arts budgets and the number of
senior-level arts courses offered. Furthermore, secondary schools with budgets
of $2000 or more are more likely to provide arts-related opportunities than
those with budgets under $2000. Secondary schools with budgets of $2000 or more
are:
11% more likely to be
able to display their art
15% more likely to see
live artistic performances
33% more likely to learn
an instrument in school hours
47% more likely to
participate in a choir, orchestra, or band
63% more likely to work
with an artist or professional from outside the school
The impact of fundraising
There is also a clear
link between the amount schools fundraise and the size of their arts budgets.
At the secondary level, schools who report fundraising for the arts are 22%
more likely to report an arts budget of $5000 or more. At the elementary level,
this effect is even more pronounced. Elementary schools who report fundraising
for the arts are twice as likely to report a budget of $5000 or more.
When we look at
top-decile and bottom-decile fundraising elementary schools, regardless of
whether they reported raising money for the arts, the gap widens further. The
top fundraising elementary schools are almost three times more likely to have
an arts budget of $5000 or more, compared to elementary schools in the lowest
fundraising decile.
The impact of demographic factors
Socio-economic status is
one of strongest predictors of academic achievement (Davis-Kean, 2005; Sirin, 2005). Many international organizations track socio-economic status through
proxies such as parental education, parental occupation, family income, and
resources available in the home (e.g. Hooper, Mullis, Martin, & Fishbein, 2017; OECD, 2016).
This year, we used
information from Statistics Canada and Ontario’s Ministry of Education to look
at the percentage of students from each school whose families’ after-tax income
is below the Low-Income Measure. Using our survey sample of elementary schools,
People for Education compared the top quartile on this measure — which we refer
to as high poverty schools – and the bottom quartile — referred to as low
poverty schools. We also looked at the percentage of students from each school
whose parents had achieved a university accreditation. Using our sample of elementary
schools, we compared the top quartile — schools with high parental education —
to those in the bottom quartile — with low parental education.
Low poverty schools are
more likely to raise more money per school, more money per student, and more
money specifically for the arts, as compared to high poverty schools. Schools
with high parental education were 10 times more likely to have an arts budget
of $5000 or more, as compared to schools with low parental education.
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