May 2001
Technical Fouls in BC’s School Funding
by Peter Cowley
When Kitsilano Secondary, an urban Vancouver public school, and White Rock Christian, a suburban private school, clashed in the final of the British Columbia high school boy’s basketball championship, it was a classic meeting of equals. The game was one of those where everybody knew that on any given day, either team could take the cup. But in one very important way, these two schools are not equals. The School Act and the Independent Schools Act, the statutory engines of provincial Kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) education policy, tell us so.
Let us assume that the benefits of education accrue not only to the individual learner, but also to the society in which he or she lives and works. Let us stipulate, for the time being, that since there may be a supplementary social benefit arising from the education of its individual members, society, through its government, should contribute something to its cost.
Under the enabling legislation, the province of British Columbia makes society’s contribution to the education of its citizens through the annual provision of operating and capital grants to the province’s K-12 schools. However, for reasons unspecified in any legislation, it does not value equally the education students receive at different schools.
White Rock Christian is Kitsilano’s equal in more than just the quality of its basketball program. The school’s teachers must follow the same provincial curriculum guidelines as do the teachers at Kitsilano. At both schools, the teachers are, in the main, certified by the British Columbia College of Teachers. The authorities that operate both schools must abide by a similar variety of statutory and ministerial regulations and orders as well as a host of municipal regulations. Both must be operated by a non-profit entity.
That said, there are differences between the two schools. Kitsilano is obliged to admit any school-aged student who resides within a specified geographical area, whereas White Rock Christian can be more selective. Except in very specific circumstances, Kitsilano may not charge fees for its education program; White Rock Christian operates under a much less rigorous constraint.
Taking their similarities and differences into account, do these two schools merit different levels of societal support? The legislation answers in the affirmative. Kitsilano is operated by one of the province’s 60 public school districts. On average, these authorities receive a little more than $6,000 per student in annual operating grants.1 The districts are also reimbursed in full for any Ministry-approved capital expenditure that they incur building and renovating schools. The private society that operates White Rock Christian receives less than one-half of the per-student operating grant the school districts receive. It must fund its capital program entirely without government support. In BC, when a public school district provides education, society picks up the full tab. When private concerns supply education, the support is substantially less.
Are the differences between the two schools sufficient to warrant this discrimination in the level of public support? It does not appear to be so. In fact, nowhere in the legislation or elsewhere does the Ministry of Education argue the case. The selective admission that White Rock Christian practices merely assures that individual students are matched to programs from which they will receive the greatest benefit. Indeed, such selection is routinely practiced within the public school system as well. Most school districts offer a variety of programs to which admission is restricted. For instance, participation in enriched programs often requires evidence of high academic ability; specialized arts programs require competitive auditions.
Slightly more persuasive to some is the notion that public schools need more financial support specifically because they are prohibited from charging fees. After all, it is argued, do not private schools have the ability—because of the relative affluence of their students’ parents—to top up their government grants with tuition fees? Parents who choose private schools for their children are assumed to be able to afford tuition fees, while parents who choose government-run schools are assumed unable to do so. Yet there is little evidence that the majority of BC parents who choose private schools have any greater financial resources than do those parents whose children attend public schools. Perhaps there is an argument to be made for introducing tuition fees into the public schools for those families who can afford them, but there is no basis for discriminating against private school parents on the basis of ability to pay.
Are there differences in student outcomes at the government-run schools that merit augmented funding for the sector? No such differences are evident in the analysis of the academic performance data upon which the Institute’s annual Report Card on British Columbia’s Secondary Schools is based. Likewise, there is no evidence to suggest that the province’s public schools produce better or more productive citizens, more effective athletes, or more creative artists than do the private schools.
Where, then, is the justification for treating White Rock Christian any differently as regards funding than Kitsilano?
Yet discrimination persists, embedded in the regulations promulgated under the Independent Schools Act. In the absence of any belated, rational defense of this funding discrimination, the Act’s regulations can and should be immediately amended. As they stand now, the regulations define a series of funding groups. Each private school is assigned to one or more of these groups based on various facets of its organization and methods of operation. White Rock Christian, for instance, is a "Group 1" school, and therefore qualifies for a per-student operating grant of about one-half that provided to neighbouring public schools. Since, as we have shown, there is no apparent reason for this differential, the Group 1 rate should immediately be increased to 100 percent of the public school rate. This simple regulatory change would redress an inequity imposed on the hundreds of thousands of families who have, over the years, chosen to send their children to Group 1 schools such as White Rock Christian.
Other inequities in private school funding, equally without rationale, could also be eliminated easily. "Group 2" private schools receive just over a third of the funding provided to neighbouring public schools. They are penalized because they choose to spend more in per-student operating expenditures than do nearby government-run schools. Is the return to society any less because a school engages more teaching assistants and counsellors per student than are currently provided at the closest public school?
Group 3 private schools are offered no funding by the Ministry. They have chosen not to follow the provincial curriculum. They provide an education program based on a different curriculum that, presumably, they believe better suits the needs of their students. Does society necessarily benefit less from the education provided according to a curriculum developed by Alberta Learning, the International Baccalaureate organization, or a private educational publishing house?
Group 4 private schools are also offered no funding by the Ministry. Such schools are run as profit-making ventures. What, precisely, are the characteristics of a non-profit organization that qualify it for funding, the absence of which disqualifies profit-making organizations from being likewise favoured?
The time is right for a reassessment of the role of government in K-12 education, particularly as it relates to the less than arms-length relationship between the funding Ministry, and the public school districts. The districts’ favoured position as education providers exists as a matter of habit rather than as the result of the delivery of superior service to students. By partially eliminating their funding advantage, government-run schools will be encouraged to improve as they compete more vigorously with private schools for the patronage of their students.
In the championship basketball game, Kitsilano ended up beating White Rock Christian by a healthy margin. With a few simple changes to the rules of the funding game, Kitsilano and White Rock Christian can both provide a high quality education while playing on a more level court.
Note
1 The funding formula used by the province’s Ministry of Education is a complex one, the details of which are contained in a funding manual provided to each district annually. The shortcomings of the existing funding arrangements will be the subject of a forthcoming publication.
Peter Cowley (peterc@fraserinstitute.ca) is Director of School Performance Studies at The Fraser Institute. He is co-author of the Institute’s series
of report cards on Canada’s secondary schools.
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