Quote:
Originally Posted by YOWetal
In Quebec private schools are already publicly funded. Though this doesn't seem to be an issue around religion?
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Private schools are
partially funded by the government in Quebec. When my kids were that age the government subsidy was around 7000 dollars per child per year. It left 3000-5000 dollars for the parents to pay out of pocket, depending on the school.
In order to qualify for the funding a private school must abide by the same Ministry of Education rules and programs closely. So these private schools don't have much freedom to choose their own way. Beyond enriching and bolstering programs above with that Ministry demands.
Private schools that want to do their own thing more (even if they still have Ministry stuff they need to abide by) aren't eligible for government funding.
There are very of them that forgo the funding.
As you say it's not about religion, though a good number of the private schools that get the funding are religious. Quebec being Quebec, most of the private schools in the province are former collèges classiques that were a small network of private schools run by the Catholic church in the days before we had a public school system. The collèges cost parents money and didn't have room for everyone, so lots of kids were uneducated.
Most of the old collèges classiques today are "cafeteria Catholic" or "lapsed Catholic" in character. The one my kids went to had quite a few Muslim kids who attended it as the parents felt it instilled better values than public schools. (Direct quotes from the parents of some of my kids' friends.)