The public school monopoly is failing Ontario’s kids

It’s time for Ontario to stop protecting the status quo and start putting students first

For students across Ontario, the school year has come to a close. While some of us might be thinking about vacation and beach season, Acton Academy Mississauga founder Sabrina Anzini is hitting the accelerator.

Acton, a Kindergarten-to-Grade 8 school, was founded just two years ago and uses self-directed education for 18 learners. It has expansion plans, including high school programming, in the years ahead.

Acton is part of a global network of learner-driven schools founded, Sabrina says, “to recognize that every child is on a hero’s journey to find their calling to change the world.” Her independent school operates on a learner-driven model of education, without graded assessments. Instead, it focuses on mastery of the curriculum through Socratic discussions, real-world projects and individualized goals. Learning is facilitated by educators (“guides”) who help students research questions, solve problems and build resilience and ownership of their own learning.

Sabrina and Acton are not alone. Recent Cardus research has found that more than 300 schools have been started since 2022 in Ontario, ranging from nature schools, Montessori schools, schools for students with special needs, microschools, classical education schools and more. Some offer distributed learning programs in which students learn at home for two or three days each week and attend school for the remainder of the week. Across Canada, more than 470,000 students attend a wide variety of independent schools like these.

Our research shows more than ever that families in Ontario want educational options and opportunities for their children. Independent schools are responding to that demand, even without government support, with a laser focus on meeting the needs of students and their families:

“To give children autonomy and a place to learn and play in nature.”
“To provide a place for neurodiverse students to learn in a safe, caring community.”
“To provide…the wider community with a middle school that allows students to develop independence and a strong foundation of knowledge and skills.”

As for Sabrina, she says simply, “There were no learner-driven education offerings in my local area.”

These school leaders are ordinary folks who have seen a problem and are creating solutions. They believe that education in Ontario can be better, and that education that meets all student needs is a shared goal—not something that should be left only to public education.

Each of these schools offers solutions to some of education’s most pressing challenges, and their presence and growth reflect real desires from real parents for real educational opportunities. They challenge our default assumptions about education and how it should be offered.

As entrepreneurs like Sabrina work without support to address gaps in our education system, it’s time to ask our educational policymakers: Shouldn’t a robust publicly supported education system include all sorts of different schools? Why would our conception of what public education is—or what it could be—exclude alternative delivery methods like Montessori and nature schools?

One of the most common arguments for the status quo that I hear is that only public education can build social cohesion, and that allowing choice in education automatically leads to segregation. Not only does Cardus data on graduate civic outcomes suggest otherwise, but logic suggests our framework is faulty.

Social cohesion is a product of human formation, not something exclusive to public education. Both independent and public schools are a reflection of their local communities, and both are highly capable of fostering within their students the attributes and disciplines that build social cohesion. What’s more, social cohesion, which we desperately need more of these days, is a function of local community contexts built around shared goals—something inherent to independent schools.

We can build better systems. All we need to do is pay a little more attention to, and support, the grassroots activity going on around us. As Sabrina told us, “Parents are well aware and acknowledge that traditional education methods don’t work anymore.”

It’s brave souls like Sabrina and the parents sending their children to her school who are doing something about the untenable status quo. While the Sabrinas of the world get to work this summer, it’s time for our educational policymakers to hit the books and rethink what education looks like in Ontario.

Joanna DeJong VanHof is the Program Director for Education at the think tank Cardus. An expert in K-12 education systems, her research focuses on the availability, accessibility, and accountability of independent schooling in Canada. With a background in educational leadership and governance, Joanna is currently completing her PhD in educational leadership and policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).