A new survey of Ontario Catholic teachers reveals alarming levels of workplace violence and harassment, with nine in 10 having experienced or witnessed some form of either in the past year.

Perhaps more unnerving is that incidents have risen sharply since 2017, as teachers now report an average of seven violent incidents a year.

For Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association president René Jansen in de Wal, the findings are undoubtedly deeply disappointing but far from shocking, given the state of classrooms across the province. 

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“It wasn’t surprising, and I think that’s the saddest part,” he said.  

Indeed, violence appears to have become the “new normal” in Catholic classrooms throughout Ontario, with findings from “A System Under Strain: Violence and Harassment in Ontario Schools” highlighting violence against teachers as no longer rare, isolated incidents, but what Jansen in de Wal calls a “daily reality for both school staff and students." It showed that many are directly experiencing abuse in the form of physical assaults and threats, particularly in elementary schools.

The report is based on an online, province-wide survey conducted in the spring of 2025 by Pollara Strategic Insights in collaboration with OECTA. The survey was sent to about 45,000 OECTA members, who teach in publicly funded Catholic schools across Ontario, with 2,873 Catholic teachers from both elementary and secondary schools completing the survey. 

It showed that incidents are happening more often and more severely than before and, in turn, are carrying a deeper impact on teachers’ safety, mental health and ability to do their jobs effectively. 

The OECTA president revealed the report was sparked by government dismissal during the last bargaining round from 2022 to 2024 after concerns raised about teacher safety during the pandemic were set aside. 

“ Since 2019 and the onset of COVID, we’ve had too much screen time, cell phones, social media, all of these things have come together to create anxiety, social isolation and mental health issues. Parents are dealing with it with their kids at home, people are dealing with it in the community, and what was disturbing was that in the last round of bargaining, when this was raised, the trustees and the government dismissed it — they didn't take the word of teachers that this was actually happening,” said Jansen in de Wal. 

While all of those post-COVID factors that have ravaged the mental health of students and society at large remain a key cause, the report found that 87 per cent of teachers directly link violence to issues such as staffing shortages, oversized classes and a lack of supports such as adequate educational assistants, special education teachers and mental health experts. 

System Under Strain goes on to underscore issues with reporting systems, with half of the teachers saying they aren't properly trained or simply cannot access reporting systems, one-third as having been discouraged from reporting and another third saying that nothing happens if they do. It’s a problematic realization in that the report, as disappointing as it seems, likely understates the true scale of what happens behind closed classroom doors.

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For the association's president, it also comes with an understanding that the issues are not just affecting teachers, but students as well. 

“ While teachers are being impacted psychologically by violence in the classroom, the five-year-old kid in class sees that too. Not only are the children seeing it, but it’s being normalized in a place that needs to be safe in order (for them) to learn,” he said. 

Jansen in de Wal questions that, while parents used to expect the government to ensure their children's safety in class, the current administration’s inability to hold itself accountable, as seen in the denial of the group’s concerns at the last round of bargaining, raises the question of what they will do next. 

Having given a call for safety to be built into Catholic schools across Ontario, he suggests that change begins not on spreadsheets necessarily, but with caring adults in sufficient numbers. 

“ I think there should be a full public inquiry that consults parents, teachers and communities to talk about what's going on in schools and what it is we want from these schools.  We have great student voices that we need to sit down with and be honest. To me, that would be the first real good sign; otherwise, it's just political theatre,” he said. 

The report can be found at catholicteachers.ca/OECTA/media/pdfs/News/2026/Violence-Survey-Report_Feb-2026.pdf. 

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