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Winning the battle but losing the war
September 05, 2012 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) at 04:53 AM
A new Ipsos Reid poll finds that 58% of Canadians believe private school education is better than public school education. Even more telling, 63% of Canadians would send their children to a private school if money were not a concern.
A couple of snippets from the Global Toronto report
- Dissatisfaction with schools varies from province to province, however. People in the Prairies tend to give their schools top marks. Fifty-three per cent of people living in Saskatchewan and Manitoba would grade their schools with an “A” or a “B.”
- Labour unrest does seem to be a significant factor affecting people’s overall perception of the school system. The lowest-graded schools are in British Columbia where 26 per cent of people gave the school system a “D” or “F”, and Ontario where 23 per cent of people gave those same low marks.
This ought to give the Ontario and BC teachers’ unions pause, since their militancy runs the risk of driving away more parents from the public schools, accelerating the province’s enrolment decline and the associated need for teachers.
Though the public system would appear to be tilting downward, one can never underestimate the strong competitive pressures that exist between the private and the public systems. Especially, as enrollments are coming down across the board in relationship to the overall smaller population of children. The cost of private school enrollment has not declined. Thus, it will be no surprise to see more public school innovations and increased user friendliness in terms of choice. A substantial population of private school users will be very happy to return/stay in the public system if they see the offerings as attractive and the results similar.
On the private side of the equation, there is tremendous pressure to maintain enrollments, be innovative and of course maintain high standards to justify the substantial cost of the private school choice.