EdInvest News
 

October 2004
 
Copyright © World Bank Group, 2004.  All Rights Reserved.
 
http://www2.ifc.org/edinvest/newsletter.htm
 

Facilitating Investment in the Global Education Market



This Month's Topic: – In this month's newsletter the EdInvest Country Snapshot focuses on Canada and its school choice policies.  We summarize the Canadian Education Freedom Index published by the Simon Fraser Institute findings.  See the study online:
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/


Introduction

In Canada, primary and secondary education under provincial control and not a mandate of the federal government, with the exception of Aboriginal students.  As a result, there are variations across the country in the schooling options available to parents.  

Historically, Canadians have had some choice within the public system.  Under the British North America Act of 1867, certain religious schools were guaranteed the right to public support, but only in provinces where these denominations had legal rights prior to Confederation (1867).  These provinces were New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec.  Today, linguistic minorities and Aboriginals living on reserves have the choice of attending schools on or off their reserve, sometimes with federal funding.

Today, some provinces, through funding and regulation, support many different educational choices for parents while others make it nearly impossible for parents to educate their children anywhere but their local public school.  The CEF Index measures the freedom that parents in different provinces have to educate their children.  It does this by comparing policies governing the three types of schools  they might choose if the public system is unsatisfactory to them: home schools, independent school (private) schools or charter schools.  The index is strictly inter-provincial and does not measure the differences in school choice available in different parts of the same province.

Home schooling: Only Alberta provides direct financial assistance to parents who home school their children. Money can be used for any costs associated with the home school.  Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia also allocate money to school boards or private schools that register home school students.  There is almost an even split in the number of provinces which require parents to apply for permission to home school – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia do not require permission.  Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia do not require reports from parents and will intervene only when parents are thought to be incapable.

Private schools: Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia offer from thirty-five to thirty-eight percent of the funding spent on government-run schools to students who attend private schools.  Starting in 2002, Ontario made funding available directly to parents who pay private school tuition through a refundable tax credit.  Now worth twenty percent of tuition up to a maximum of $1,400 CN per child per year, this credit will increase for the next five years until it is worth fifty percent of the tuition, or a maximum of $3,500 per child.  Alberta, Quebec, Newfoundland and Price Edward Island provincial governments  have some authority over curriculum in private schools.  Private schools must have certified teachers in Quebec, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island.  

Charter schools:  These schools can exist only in Alberta.  They may not select students by ability or charge tuition, must adhere to all provincial health, safety and building standards and are subject to all laws and regulations as outlined under the Societies Act and Company Act.  The province provides the charter schools with a per-pupil operating grant and freedom to manage the school.  Applications for a charter school must be made to the local school board.  

Minorities and Choice: Canada has entrenched some education choices as group rights.  Certain linguistic, religious and racial groups enjoy a publicly funded choice of schooling that is not available to other Canadians.  In every province, the Francophone or Anglophone minority has the right to public school in its own language.  Only New Brunswick allows students to be educated in either English or French as the primary language.  Children who speak neither official language are free to choose between English and French.

Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario offer separate religious education to children of Catholic parents and Alberta and Ontario have a public school system for French Catholic families.  Across Canada, aboriginal Canadians have freedoms of school governance and funding not available to other Canadians.  In 1997, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador abolished all denominational public schools and replaced them with non-denominational schools, adding religious education to the curriculum.  Parents may withdraw their children or request a religious observance.  Prior to 1997, there were no non-denominational public schools in the province.

Quality: The provinces whose students are the country's top scorers are those with the greatest educational freedom, while those whose students repeatedly score below average tend to be the least free.  The Student Achievement Indicators Test (SAIP) and the OECD's Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) are both conducted to a sample of students and schools across Canada.  Both PISA and SAIP show that Alberta, Quebec and British Columbia generally have the highest academic achievement in Canada.  Ontario and Manitoba rank in the middle, and the Atlantic provinces (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Education Island) and Saskatchewan tend to perform below the national average

Alberta, with the greatest amount of school choice as well as the highest international test scores, spends considerably less per pupil than do Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec or British Columbia.  It also has one of the highest student/educator ratios in the country.  Alberta spends $6,871 CN per full-time equivalent pupil and has a student /teacher ratio of 18.4.  The Canadian average student/teacher ratio is 16.2 and the Canadian average spending per full-time equivalent student is $7,145 CN.

Funding: Funding does not generally follow the student when parents opt for a school outside the public system.  Where this does occur, the amount differs from the amount provided for a public system place, with the exception of charter schools in Alberta.  The largest transfer of funding to private schools is in Alberta, where 60% of the per student grant is given to private schools.  Despite being well-funded, private schools in Alberta do not attract the largest number of students:  Quebec (9.1 percent), Manitoba (8.8 percent) and British Columbia (6.3 percent) all have a higher proportion of students enrolled in private schools than Alberta (4.4 percent).  

Some of these provinces offer private schools a choice of funding levels, each with its own set of regulations.  For example, British Columbia has four categories of private schools, each with its own level of funding .  Group 1 receive the most funding and are constrained by the most regulations.  Group 3 schools receive no funding but are not required to employ certified teachers.  Group 4 are for-profit schools; these are heavily regulated and not funded.

Under common law in Canada non-profit schools are considered charitable institutions and so receive substantial benefits not available to for-profit schools.  These benefits include tax deductibility of donations to the school and exemptions both from property tax and from tax on investments.

Legislation: Federal legislation guarantees free public education to all eligible children and allow the operation of francophone schools, schools operated by Aboriginal bands and schools in institutions.

Provincial legislation indicates the possibility or right to have educational choice .  Choice may be legislated but not promoted or easily accessed within a school jurisdiction.  British Columbia has no explicit policy either and provincial assessments are implemented as needed.  Nova Scotia is the only province which does not support choice between public and private schools and thus does not fund private schools.  However, it does all private schools to operate and allows options within the public system.

Conclusion: Overall,  Alberta ranks highest in terms of choice, followed by  British Columbia, Quebec and Manitoba.  It is the only province to provide financial support for those who teach their children at home.  It also subsidized children who attend private schools.  However, there is a high level of governmental control.  Families in Alberta are the only Canadians who can send their children to charter schools but the limits on funding, chartering authorities and number of charter schools has meant that this options is currently available only to a tiny percentage of Albertans.  Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland offering the least amount of choice either in the public school system or outside it.


Articles

The state of Maharashtra, India has invited applications for establishing self-financing universities in the state under recently passed legislation.  Only societies or trusts that were registered on or before September 30, 2004 are eligible to apply, and only institutions with an exceptional track record would be granted permission.  Government does plan to retain some supervisory and regulatory powers.  See the article in
The India Times:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-898531,curpg-1.cms

The Conservative party in Britain is promising to introduce a "pupil passport" idea, similar to a scheme in Sweden where parents can choose any other state school or a private school at no cost.  Parents can use a virtual "voucher" to "buy" a place at the school of their choice. The idea is that funding follows the pupil and, in this way, the state supports the schools that are most popular.  See the October 5th, 2004 BBC article online:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3717744.stm

Starting 2006, students at British universities will be able to spend their loans and grants on fees at private universities, in a move described by one private university head as the introduction of a "voucher" system.  New students starting any designated higher education course at any higher education institution will all be able to get a student loan for their fees of up to £3,000 and they will all be eligible for the maintenance grant of up to £2,700.  The story can be found in the Guardian online at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1326527,00.html

Mount Austin International University, a private university linked to businessman Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, has been cleared to open in Johor, Malaysia.   The university will offer degrees in business management, accounting, information technology, design and engineering and plans to have 10,000 students when is opens in 2008.  In addition five private colleges were upgraded to university colleges.   See the full October 23 article online at: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2004/10/23/nation/9212797&sec=nation

Pakistani Prime Minister Begum Khaleda recently underscored the need for maintaining quality of education and urged all concerned not to see education with a commercial attitude, saying that education without quality is of no avail at home or abroad and that the government has taken various steps, including checking copying in public examinations, to improve quality of education in the country.  See the entire October 17th article online:
http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/printer_13177.shtml

Publications

A new book by David Cohen Welcome to the Campus of Struggle: Dispatches from the International Academic Front 1999-2004 is a product of three dozen working visits to 14 different countries.  It includes reports on global and regional trends in education, foreign correspondence and profiles of academic leaders.  The book is published by Dunmore Press.

A paper by CIRPEE (Centre interuniversitaire sur le risqué, les politiques economiques et l'emploi) published in December 2003 examines the returns to education in Senegal.
The authors found that the xxx returns to education are higher than the social rate of return.  Secondary and tertiary education has a lower social rate of return than primary and lower secondary education.  Unemployment and grade repetition has a negative impact on both social and xxx rate of return.  See the entire paper by Diagne, Boccanfuso and Barry in pdf format, in French:



Events

Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG), together with other leading institutions, will establish the federally funded Center on School Choice, Competition and Achievement.  PEPG will examine the impacts of school vouchers on public schools, the effects of charter schools and private schools on student achievement, and the effects of school accountability systems on political competition within school districts.  Participating institutions include the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University, the Brookings Institution, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Northwest Evaluation Association, and the Stanford University School of Education.  For further details, please see the website:
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/pepg/

Northstar Conferences has organized the 2004 Education Industry, Finance and Investment Summit: Riding the Wave or Weathering the Storm?  Mapping a Course in the Postsecondary Market.  The summit will focus on growth strategies, accreditation, ethics and compliance and reaching and teaching the postsecondary student.  The event will take place December 6-8, 2004 in Washington, DC.  See the website for further details:
http://www.northstarconferences.com/conferences.asp?code=4CFIN01&pcode=



Suzanne Roddis (send comments to edinvest@ifc.org )