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Paul W. Bennett: School’s out, again and again, in Nova Scotia

School snow days returned with a vengeance in 2025-26, and Nova Scotia is setting new records.

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Six years after the pandemic disruption, system-wide closures are still with us. Entire instructional days are still written off with no official policy to default to remote online learning or to replace the lost instructional time.

Nova Scotia’s national reputation as the snow day champion remains unchallenged among the provinces and right across North America.

System-wide shutdowns have already closed schools seven times, on Dec. 15; Jan. 19, 26 and 27; and Feb. 2, 12 and 24.

No official data is aggregated or reported by the Education Department or the districts (known as regional education centres). All school districts have cancelled between seven and 12 days of school, so far.

Indifference to closures

Cancelling school is habit forming and now elicits little more than a collective shrug. Since school was cancelled for 13 weeks at the height of COVID, public officials, educators and many parents have come to tolerate significant “learning loss” as a result of cancellations.

Most troubling of all, there’s an implicit acceptance of the inability or........

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