Parents Seek Alternatives to Public Education
Prince George, B.C. – The ongoing public teachers dispute has some parents seeking alternatives.
Take heightened interest in independent schools as an example.
Federation of Independent School Associations Executive Director Peter Froese says it's common to see a spike in registration for independent schools when public school teachers go on strike.
"I won't have the actual data until the middle of September when some of the preliminary results from our schools come in but what our schools are telling us is that in late June and early July the numbers of inquiries has increased substantially."
He says that's always the case when there're labour disruptions in the public school system.
"If you track labour disputes in the public sector, the following year you will always see an increase in enrollment in independent schools. For example following job action in 2012 we saw a 4% increase in registration in 2013."
With this in mind, he says the biggest challenge is finding enough room to satisfy demand.
"The problem is that there's limited capacity in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley because the province does not provide us capital funding. But in Northern B.C. I'm expecting you're going to see growth in these schools because independent schools there have available seats."
And Froese says over the past 10 years independent schools continue to grow.
"There's no question on that. If you track enrollment we've seen a decline in the K-12 sector – the number of students of school age has been declining but that hasn't affected independent schools. While public schools are seeing a decline in enrollment we've seen growth in the 1 to 2% range each year."
Of B.C.'s 635,057 K-12 students in the 2013/14 school year, more than 76,000 attended independent schools, accounting for 12% of the student population.
Another option for parents is homeschooling.
Though just a shade over 2,000 K-12 students were home schooled last year (2,033), a Prince George woman suggests that may be changing.
Joanne DiGiuseppe is a learning consultant with SelfDesign (a personalized learning program) and is an administrator with the Prince George Homeschoolers Facebook page.
She says she started the page because "I noticed that though there were a couple of email groups in town, I just noticed that there was a number of homeschoolers that were getting lost in the cracks and couldn't find a way to connect."
And though DiGiuseppe only launched the page last year, she says it's grown substantially from 30 members to over 150, though she admits not all are homeschooling their kids just yet.
"There's a lot of questions – they want to see what other people are doing and to know what homeschooling's all about."
She says the teachers dispute could be one reason it's become more popular but says it's also due to the increased need for special education.
"Lots of families are asking about special education. People with concerns about their children not receiving care within the public school system."
DiGiuseppe homeschools her own two children (ages 7 and 11) and says she made the decision based on her older daughters temperament.
"She's very sensitive and very inquisitive and at that point the ministry was transitioning kindergarten from half days to almost full days and I knew it wouldn't work for her so at that point we decided to give homeschooling a try."
She says it's just blossomed from there.
"We were able to connect with other families to see older kids finishing high school and to see how happy and confident they were."
Comments
I work with some people who home schooled their kids.. It took the kids a ton of upgrading at college to even have the basic requirements to apply for some classes, they also missed out on the social activities as well.
People do you relize that private and alternative schooling costs a lot of money. ..is the Liberal government trying to 2 tier the education system also. ..is Christy kid going to miss any school I think not as it goes to private schooling. ….I know a lot of teachers and have talked about what they want and I can tell you it is not what is being reported here. …no one wants to come out and say it as they would be chastised. …class sizes need to be smaller but we need to bring back special needs classrooms. ..putting special needs students in regular classrooms isn’t working. …lets see how many feathers this ruffles. …
I agree prov1, the Gov’t has to make a decision to either keep the status quo of classroom integration, but increase the T/As, or go back to a separate learning situation. If my taxes go up because of it, so be it.
I’m getting seriously weary of folks continuously shouting for lower taxes, lower taxers, but expect service levels to remain constant.
Doesn’t work that way sunshine.
Good comments so far. With special needs classrooms, class sizes wouldn’t necessarily have to be reduced. I have lots of class pictures with 25-30 kids in my class.
The only problem is the parents of these children. They will fight tooth and nail to keep things the way they are, regardless of the financial cost, not to mention the cost to the other students in the room.
In the meantime, it looks like this dispute isn’t going to end any time soon. It might be time to look into the private system.
Education for profit, perfect! Next we should do the same with healthcare.
Education for profit – USA style.
Costs increased, learning outcomes decreased. Let’s do it (sarcasm).
More kids in private less cost to the government. Maybe there is a method to their madness.
Duh-ragon: “Education for profit, perfect! Next we should do the same with healthcare.”
Just so you know, there are already private healthcare clinics. Even some in PG! Gasp!
Pylot Project:- “I’m getting seriously weary of folks continuously shouting for lower taxes, lower taxers, but expect service levels to remain constant.”
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But service levels haven’t remained constant, they’ve declined. While our taxes have risen. And keep rising.
Right now, if we’re to believe the Fraser Institute’s ‘Tax Freedom Day’ data, we contribute on average very nearly half our annual earnings to supposedly pay for all the goods and services governments provide for us.
By extension of the reasoning of some on here, if we contributed ALL our annual earnings to the government then it could supposedly provide ALL the OTHER things we now pay for ourselves, and do so better than we can paying for those things ‘directly’ individually ourselves, and do so WITHOUT GOING INTO DEBT? A debt which it then COULD NOT INCUR, because it would already have taken ALL our annual earnings, and there’d be no ‘more’ money to repay that debt. Could the government do this? I don’t think so. Not the way we currently account for things and their present relationship to money.
Really, if it was ever understood that ‘profit’ is simply an accounting feed-back mechanism that enables consumers to direct producers in what it is they actually want in the way of goods and/or services, and not some inherent evil, we’d be a whole lot further ahead towards understanding the REAL issue here. Which is NOT whether something is produced or provided ‘privately’ or ‘publicly’ at all, but WHY we REALLY do not currently ever “have the money” in sufficient quantity to afford it either way.
Comment Posted by: JohnnyBelt on August 17 2014 5:04 PM
Duh-ragon: “Education for profit, perfect! Next we should do the same with healthcare.”
Just so you know, there are already private healthcare clinics. Even some in PG! Gasp!
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You truly are a child!
Posted by: Dragonmaster on August 17 2014 2:04 PM
Education for profit, perfect! Next we should do the same with healthcare.
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What on earth ore you talking about? Let’s review the tuition fees for three semi-private schools in Prince George:
Immaculate Conception, St. Mary’s and Sacred Heart charge $240 per month for an individual or $320 a month for a family.
Since these 3 schools only receive 50% of the funding that public schools get, where is the profit?
They are all church schools so you get more than the 3r’s.
Thank you axman for pointing out that the independent Catholic schools are NOT making a profit. The reason most people pick these schools is because the student population is smaller, the classes get TA’s if they need them, there are only 1 grade per class, the schools seems to allow parents to engage more in the school and then there is the religious aspect.
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