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It’s more than thirty years past due, in fact. In 1984, Bernard Shapiro’s report on public education in Ontario recommended increased school choice — not as a way to undermine the public system but to improve it. The debate over Catholic school funding pushed the school choice issue aside in Ontario, even as other jurisdictions in Canada and around the world gave parents and kids more options.

“You can get more school choice by increasing diversity and access within the public system,” said Derek Allison, who authored the report titled Expanding Choice in Ontario’s schools. “The way school choice has tended to be portrayed in Ontario is as something that will diminish the public system because it will encourage more parents and students to move to the private sector. That doesn’t have to the be the case at all.”

The paper notes the Catholic and French systems in the province offer choices to those parents not afforded to others in Ontario, an inequity he argues can and should be addressed.

“We are just falling behind. School choice has been one of the major and perhaps the most potent education-reform initiatives that has been adopted very very widely around the world,” said Allison, emeritus professor in the education faculty at The University of Western Ontario. Studies show it can improve both student achievement and parental satisfaction.

Some people think of school choice as synonymous with vouchers parents can take to the school of their choice, public or private or charter, but there are many other options. In Canada, B.C., Manitoba and Alberta all allow open enrolment, which means kids can go to whichever school in their board they like, without regard for physical boundaries. Those three provinces, Quebec and Saskatchewan also provide funding to non-government run schools.