The architecture of Ontario’s public education system is a wonder to behold. The province has four types of publicly funded school boards, but only one is accessible to anyone — and all of them are straying from their core mandate.
Ontario has a Catholic school system, but it’s not just for Catholics. School boards looking for more students and the grants they bring can and do accept non-Catholics. French school boards accept large numbers of people not legally entitled to French education, for the same reasons.
One might think the primary job of the English public school boards would to offer instruction in English, since that is the mother tongue of nearly 70 per cent of the Ontario population. Instead, English instruction is falling into disfavour. In Ottawa, more than half the elementary students in the public school board are enrolled in French immersion.
This unusual system is built on a foundation of constitutional deals and charter rights, but similar arrangements have already been overturned in Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, and are being challenged in Saskatchewan.
Now the Ontario system is facing legal action, too, and it is coming from a surprising direction. Basile Dorion, a former school trustee, is challenging the constitutionality of the admissions approach of French-language school boards. The problem is that 45 per cent of students in Ontario’s French-language schools don’t have French as their first language. Some parents say it waters down the French milieu, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if they are right.
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