Separate School - Ontario

Ontario

School boards funded by the province consist of 29 English Catholic and 8 French Catholic boards, as well as 35 non-denominational public school boards (31 English public, 4 French public). There is one Protestant separate school jurisdiction in Ontario, the Burkevale Protestant Separate School, operated by the Penetanguishene Protestant Separate School Board. In Ontario, this determination was largely made throughout the province by the time of Confederation.

The public school system in the province was historically Protestant but was gradually transformed into a secular public system. Prayer in public schools was banned in the early 1980s.

Since the 19th century, funding for the Roman Catholic separate school system was provided up to Grade 10 under the British North America (BNA) Act. In 1984 the government of Premier William Davis extended full funding to include the last three (Grades 11–13 (OAC)) years of Roman Catholic secondary schools after having rejected that proposal fifteen years earlier. The first funded academic year occurred in 1985–86, as grade 11, and one grade was added in each of the next two years.

The right to have a publicly-funded separate denominational school system continues to be guaranteed by Section 93 of the 1982 Constitution Act to Roman Catholics in Ontario.

A province-wide newspaper survey conducted between 1997 and 1999 in 45 dailies indicated that 79% of 7551 respondents in Ontario favoured a single public school system, but no widely supported movement to amend the Constitution has developed.

The issue of extending public funding to other religious schools later came up in the Ontario general election, 2007; however no changes to the law have been made as of May 2011.