Taxpayers shouldn’t pay for private education
B.C. taxpayers should not be paying any part of private-school education
It deserves observing that a 10-minute drive from the Vancouver School Board offices, where the government of Premier Christy Clark sacked the board’s elected trustees Monday, on the extreme western edge of Vancouver’s west side, as if putting as much distance from the unwashed as it could, stands St. George’s School for boys. Clark’s son is enrolled there.
Proximity isn’t so much the issue here as privilege. St. George’s is an elite independent school. Its tuition fees are gaspinducing. As such, they are exclusionary, at least to me and likely thee, but not to the premier. For a girl who grew up middle-class, whose dad was a teacher, who projects a just-us-folks persona, you have to wonder if an aspiring aristocrat lurks under those populist dimples.
As an elite independent school, St. George’s can receive from the provincial government up to 35 per cent of the per-student funding that public schools receive. Less elite independent schools, which constitute the majority of private schools in B.C. and tend to be smaller and often religious in nature, can receive up to 50 per cent of per-student funding.
Proponents of private schools aren’t apologetic for this public funding; quite the opposite. Their justification can be stated as:
“We’re doing public schools a favour. You’re welcome.”
They argue that the growth of private schools in B.C. has relieved the pressure on public schools and the public purse, that the public’s tax burden would be greater if private school students were reabsorbed into the public school system. And that’s true.
This, however, glosses over a few historical realities, and ignores some basic tenets of Canadian society as if they had no bearing on the issue.
Public funding of private schools is a modern phenomenon. Before 1977, private schools in B.C. received nothing in government funding. Premier W.A.C. Bennett believed if parents wanted to send their kids to private school, they had to pay for it all themselves.
It was his son Bill Bennett who started funding private schools to a maximum of 35 per cent when he was premier. The religiously devout Socred premier Bill Vander Zalm then increased that maximum to 50 per cent for religious schools in 1989. Since then, under the Clark government’s enthusiastic support, funding has gone nowhere but up. Private schools received $341 million in government funding this year, up $30 million from the year before. The growth rate in private school funding now outstrips that of public school funding. The private school system can no longer be seen as complementing the public school system, but eroding it. Is this a bad thing? It depends, I think, on your vision of Canadian society and education’s place in it. For example, you may feel, as many parents who have their children in private schools do, that there should be a religious component to education.
Yet the separation of church and state is a pillar of Canadian law. That separation is there to act as a cohesive force in Canadian society. So, too, is the public education system a cohesive force. As a taxpayer who believes in that separation of church and state, and who believes in those cohesive forces, I don’t want my tax dollars going to schools that either exclude on the basis of religion, believe the classroom is a place for religious instruction, or that cherry-pick the students they want in their schools. If you do believe that, fine. Pay for it yourself.
(Nor should those parents be exempt from paying public school taxes. Under universality, you don’t get to pick what taxes you pay. Seniors, for example, continue to pay school taxes long after their children have graduated.)
As for those independent elite schools — those would-be Etons with their school ties and flannel pants — that they receive any government funds is obscene. The defining characteristic and greatest attribute of Canadian society is its sense of social welfare, and the belief, however deluded it may be, in egalitarianism. It’s a civilizing force in Canada. Just ask an American.
But that, too, can be a matter of perception.
Parents have every right to see their children’s education reflect those beliefs, or not. If they see an elite school as an instrument of social status, or that public schools are lacking while independent schools can offer the finest education money can buy, again, fine. Let those parents reflect the independence they crave.
Let them pay for their children’s education. Just don’t ask the rest of us to, too.