For Your Information
Delivery and Funding of Education in Manitoba - Part 2: Private Schools
Manitoba has its own particular history when it comes to education. Public education began in Manitoba at the beginning of the 19th century with the establishment of two separate school systems - one French Catholic and the other English Protestant. Following Manitoba's entry into Confederation in 1870, an Education Act was passed which established a single school board with two distinct sections, entrenching schools along either French or English lines. At that time, the French and English populations were roughly equal. However, by 1889, a few years after the defeat of the second Metis Rebellion, there were vastly more English students and schools than French and in 1890 the Manitoba Schools Act was passed abolishing separate schools and setting up a single, secular public school system whose official language was English. The French strongly opposed the closing of their schools and so in 1897, an amended Schools Act was passed which included the provision for bilingual schools wherever ten or more pupils in any school spoke either French or another non-English language.
However, from the earliest days of organized education in Manitoba, there have been private schools. The oldest is St. John's Ravenscourt, founded in 1820 as a Mission School and now considered the most exclusive private school in Manitoba. Its Patron is none other than Queen Elizabeth. Most private schools in Manitoba have a religious background and/or affiliation, while some newer ones, like Montessori schools, have neither.
For many years, private schools have legally been called independent schools. As of 1991, there were 82 independent schools in Manitoba with a total of 10,555 students, representing five percent of all students in elementary or secondary schools. This is slightly above the national average and places Manitoba third in the country as far as percentage of students, following British Columbia and Quebec. Several provinces, particularly the Maritime provinces and Newfoundland, have very few independent schools. However, enrollment has been steadily increasing in most parts of Canada in the past decade, with Western Canada showing the greatest increase.
Currently, independent schools are funded in Manitoba according to a formula which gives them 50 percent of the funding given to pupils in the public schools. The base amount for the 2000/2001 school year was $2,981 per pupil, based on operating costs. This does not include Special Education Services support which ranges from $8,565 to $19,050 per student depending on the severity of the child's disabilities. There is also a grant of $50 per pupil for curricular materials. In addition, there are several agreements under which public schools provide services and facilities to the independent schools. These include the use of clinicians such as social workers, psychologists and reading clinicians; facilities and resources for home economics and industrial arts; and the provision of transportation. In all shared service agreements, the public schools providing the services are paid by the province on a per pupil basis. This alleviates the need of those independent schools to provide this infrastructure themselves.
The funding for independent schools in Manitoba began to increase substantially under the Filmon Conservative administration. In 1990, the Filmon government signed an agreement with the Manitoba Federation of Independent Schools that provided them with 50 percent of the net operating cost per student in the public schools. They also agreed to increase incrementally, over a period of eight years, this level of support to a maximum of 80 percent by 1998. However, these additional increases did not take place, and the base level of 50 percent remains to this day. The election of the NDP in the fall of 1999 has not changed the funding formula for independent schools.