Hi ! I am getting my PR status this month and plan to move to Toronto permanently in the summer of 2011.

I have two young children aged 8 and 6. I did a little bit of a search for elementary schools in Toronto and I was surprised to find out that there is a huge number of private elementary schools with prices ranging between 10 to 15 K CND.

This bit of information made me think whether the quality of government schools are good in Toronto. Why do parents spend considerable amount of money for private elementary education ? Is it because private schools provide additional French language education or simply they are better run overall ?

I appreciate your views on the subject.

No. Education from kindergarden until the end of the bac is offered in French in separate state funded schools as well as by immersion in some state funded English language schools. (The difference in a nutshell is that an immersion school is run in English with French language classes, a French language school is just that, the teaching and administrative staff may not speak English).

I guess the Private schools offer different "types" of education . Montessori and IB ( international Baccleaureat) are two that spring to mind

The ib is widely available in state schools, in English and in French, Montessori is a good example though. What about schools for the children of religious nutters? There are lots of denominational schools, Catholic ones are funded by the state but maybe parents pay for Protestant, Islamic, Mennonite or whatever "education".

Well, people must be thinking that private schools are offering something to justify the price tag. If it is not French then it should be something else.

During my research I also found out that price of housing in the neighbourhood and ranking of schools are also closely interrelated. There is also definetely a correlation between household income and the quality of elementary school. The quality of schools is evaluated by GTA elementary school board by ranking their academic performance. There seems to be some other parameters that affect the ranking of schools such as 2nd language spoken at home and ethnicity in the neighborhood.

Generally if the household income is high and English is the first language spoken at home then the school is ranked fairly high. Probably the only anomaly I found in this statistical data is the existance of a few Chinese neighbourhoods with low household income and high percentage of 2nd language spoken at home other than English. This probably can be explained by high emphasis on education in Chinese culture.

Still the trend is very obvious. Rich neighbourhoods, good schools. There is also the fact that people can only send the kids to the state school in their neighbourhood and nowhere else.

So, can it be the case that some people are making an economic desicion whether to overpay for a house where there is a good school or pay considerably less for a similar house in a different neighbourhood and instead send their children to a private school.

This is not unique to Canada surely. The same is true in the UK as well

Not necessarily, there are plenty of people in the UK that are prepared to pay stupid amounts of money to send their "Johny" or "Tabetha" to public school in the hope that the school will turn their ordinary child into an academic superstar.

Schools that cater for special interests such as religion, montessory etc are understandable but great number of private schools are just regular schools.

Without knowing I would guess support of languages other than english and french, and religious choices other than secular or catholic is part of the picture when it comes to private schools. Lets not forget how international and multicultural Toronto is.

We have had our run ins with the school administration, but overall the public schools do a good job and are responsive to parental concerns.

I have heard from a few parents with university age kids that there is a performance gap going into uni that kids who were top of their public school classes have to bridge in their first year of Uni that private prep school kids dont seem to struggle with...this is for things like pre-med and engineering courses at the more renowned unis here. Its a struggle to adapt and get up to speed in maths and physical sciences for those ex straight A students.

I don't know that "overpay" is appropriate. School districts are a significant factor in the price of houses and feature in much real estate advertising. As AC says, that's not novel to Canada.

I very much doubt the cheap house, expensive school, hypothesis. I'd think it more likely that a large proportion of the children in private schools live in affluent areas. Maybe they're not eligible for state schools due to the status, or lack or status, of the parents. More likely though, I'd suspect well to do parents indulging whims for "alternative", religious, or other special interest education.

Private schools offer "old money" networking opportunities.

So the best schools are in the richest neighborhoods.

Who knew?

It is certainly true of the Vancouver area. If the neighborhood looks good then send your kids to the local state school.

You don't think there is a possibility you are over analyzing this a bit do you?

I think this is likely true. As well, private schools are in tune with the requirements of specific universities and can prepare students for those schools. Something of the same does exist in state funded schools but is not generally available. For example, in addition to the ib, the (state funded) school my children attending offered cramming classes for students expected to break 1500 in the SAT (when it was just two papers). This isn't something most state schools would provide but that would be expected of private schools. When one child attended a university to take a course that had a high barrier to entry she reported that everyone else at the school from Toronto had attended UCC or equivalent.

Jonboy E, yes I think I am going into too much detail with the schools but there is a reason for that. Perhaps, I should have shed more light into my personal circumstances so that what I was trying to find out was a bit more clear.

I am actually not from UK and I am Turkish and I live in Istanbul. I have been reading this forum ever since I decided to immigrate to Canada because this is probably the best one around and people are really giving such great insight on all matters related to Canadian living. We, Turks, do not have an expat Canadian forum, I guess)

I am travelling a lot in the Middle East and in Russia but I do not know much about West since I have only been in those parts of the World.( i.e Europe or North America) as a tourist.

In Istanbul the state school system is in shambles. 60 in a class with a disinterested teacher is the norm around here. Enter the private school system. Excellent standards, world class education, 2 foreign languages native foreign language teachers, music, arts whatever is available. Basically the state system and the private system are worlds apart. This come at a price though. 15-20 K CND per year per pupil is an average tuition fee. Hence almost all double income families are working their tail off to make sure that their children are in the private school.

Actually, education was one of the major reasons why I and my wife decided to immigrate because we were so angry at the system forcing us to work for tuition fees for so many years and state funded reasonable quality education was something that enticed us to Canada.

Probably this is a bit more explanatory. Anyway, when I found out the existance of a large private school system in Toronto, I said, oh, not again and decided to question it a little further.