More Ontario students attending independent schools as public school enrolment declines

TORONTO—The share of Ontario students attending independent schools increased 24.5 per cent over a 15-year period, despite not receiving any financial support from the provincial government, according to a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank. “For their children’s education, parents in Ontario are increasingly choosing options outside the public school system,” said Angela MacLeod, a policy analyst with the Fraser Institute’s Barbara Mitchell Centre for Improvement in Education and co-author of Where Our Students are Educated: Measuring Student Enrolment in Canada, 2017.

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The study finds that as a share of all K-12 students, enrolment in independent schools increased in all provinces and decreased for public schools everywhere from 2000/01 to 2014/15, the most recent year of available comparable data. In Ontario, the number of independent school students rose by 17.9 per cent to 129,607 students in 2014/15. As a share of all students in the province, independent school enrolment increased 24.5 per cent. Over the same period, public school enrolment declined by more than 140,000 students, or 6.5 per cent. As a share of total enrolment, public school enrolment declined to 93.6 per cent. Crucially, unlike Quebec and western Canada, Ontario offers no financial support to independent schools. “This absence of financial support makes the increase in the share of Ontario families choosing independent schools all the more telling”, MacLeod said. “While education is funded and delivered differently across the provinces, the evidence is clear—parents in Ontario are increasingly looking to independent schools for more choice in how their children are educated.” MEDIA CONTACT: Bryn Weese, Media Relations Specialist, Fraser Institute, 604-688-0221 ext. 589, bryn.weese@fraserinstitute.org

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