Public money should be funding public schools first
Quality education should not be exclusive to families with money, but current circumstances seem to suggest otherwise
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today,” was how African-American activist Malcolm X stressed the importance of learning in 1964. Through learning, we discover what our passions are and task ourselves with absorbing as much knowledge as possible.
Should we find what appeals to us the most, we pursue that with great intellectual vigour until we become masters in our given field. This all begins with education and it is in danger of being lost to many eager students. Right now, the British Columbian public education system is facing a funding threat to its viability.
The major funding challenge public schools must confront comes from private education. A research study found that provincial subsidies towards private schools have outpaced that of public schools. The 2022-23 school year alone saw private schools receive $491 million in what has been a nearly 20 year-long trend of private school subsidies rising faster than those of public schools when adjusted for inflation.
This means for the past 20 years, private schools – where parents pay around $30,000 annually in tuition fees, for elite schools in particular – have been getting more tax-payer money at rates faster than their universally accessible public counterparts. Public money is paying for non-public services, all while public schools are faced with overall inadequate funding and crumbling buildings.
Funding for private schools is based on a formula defined by the Independent Schools Act in which the amount may be “at either 50% or 35% of their local public school district rate” as long as the school follows provincially-mandated criteria. Advocates insist this model is fine as is because of the supposed advantage privately-educated students have over their public peers. There is some truth to this claim, until we look at the details.
According to a 2020 study released by the BC Humanist Association, the difference in performance between privately- and publicly-educated high school students during their four years at the University of British Columbia was marginal at best.
The BCHA study and a 2015 Statistics Canada report both noted that what increased odds of post-secondary success private high school students experience could be skewed by having what the 2015 report calls “socio-economic characteristics positively associated with academic success” and “school peers with university-educated parents.” In other words, private school kids are generally socialized in an environment where their friends and family are already well-off and that these connections heighten their chances of being well-off also.
Choosing to subsidize schools where the odds of success are already fairly certain is not a win for the economy down the road, but a loss for children who are not as privileged. Public education is a product of the 16th to 19th century mindset that all children, regardless of class origin, ought to spend their formative years learning instead of working the fields or, later on, the factories. The idea of who gets to learn would expand to include children of other racial, ethnic, religious, and gender identities. Education was no longer exclusive to the clergy and nobility.
This trend of preferential treatment in funding private schools represents a backsliding of those hard-won victories by advocates. Allowing a relatively privileged few to get the lion’s share of the resources deprives every other student of being able to advance up the social strata.
In effect, we would be reinventing the old system of elitist and exclusive education for the modern age. To ensure the advancement of society, we must remind ourselves that education is a collective responsibility, regardless of whether or not you have children.
