Quebec's school boards, making no progress against a brutal drop-out rate, have chosen to attack the flourishing private-school sector.
Josée Bouchard of Alma, new president of the Quebec Federation of School Boards, told the Journal de Montréal this week that she is concerned about growing private-school enrolment, saying parents think "it's part of the image of success to send your child to private school." She wants Quebec to freeze its subsidies to private schools, and abolish them within five or ten years.
Behold the full majesty of statist thinking: "Parents increasingly reject our schools? Private secondary enrolment has climbed to 18 per cent of students? Then we'll just take away their choice!" Our society has done that in health care, with the results we know, and now the pressure is on schools. Wait 'til they get to nutrition: Since some can't afford steak, it will be banned. In the name of fairness, hamburger for all!
Fortunately this arrogant bid to abolish parental school choice will not succeed. Private-school families are now too large a critical mass for any government to attack, short of full-scale class war.
There's also a sound financial argument in favour of retaining the current system. Last school year Quebec had 103 fully-private schools, mostly small, and 187 "private schools" which charge tuition but also get government grants. There are about 90,000 private secondary students, and per capita, government grants to their schools are about 60 per cent of the grants per public-school student. Bouchard's scheme and the ensuing forced migration to public schools would drive up the total cost to government.
Tuition-charging schools received $444 million from Quebec last year. In an $8-billion provincial school budget (excluding universities) that's 5.6 per cent - and $160 million less than the interest charges on school boards' debts.
Instead of trying to kneecap the success stories of Quebec education, school boards should be trying to emulate them. All parents want high-quality education. Where the public sector offers it - as in admission-by-test schools like Vincent Massey Collegiate and Royal West Academy - it is in enormous demand.
Public-school advocates complain that such schools, like private ones, skim off the cream, at the expense of other public schools. There's some truth in that claim. But the solution is not to level down. The solution is for school boards, and unions and parents to besiege MNAs to put more money into public education, so at-risk students can get more help, so student safety and standards in public schools can improve, and so excellence can be encouraged and rewarded.
Private-school bashing is a favourite sport in some quarters. But parents know what they want, and will not be diverted. Everywhere in North America, and elsewhere, support for private schools, charter schools, and the like shows that parents are ambitious about their children's education. School boards which are less ambitious will not succeed by cutting down the tall poppies. In fact they will not succeed at all.