Separate school

Separate school refers to a school which institutes education of religion among its courses, as opposed to a private school or public school.

In Canada these are often Roman Catholic schools which are publicly funded and run parallel to the public school system which has historically been Protestant but in recent years has become secular.

Protection of the Separate School system was a major issue of contention in the negotiations that led to Canadian confederation. The issue was a subject of debate at the 1864 Quebec Conference and was finally resolved at the London Conference of 1866 with a guarantee to protect the separate school system in Quebec and Ontario.

In the Quebec education system there were separate Protestant and Catholic school systems until 1988 when the system was replaced with linguistically based secular school systems. Similarly, Newfoundland and Labrador had schools organised on a confessional basis with separate denominational schools for Catholics, Seventh-day Adventists, Salvation Army and an integrated stream. This was abolished by referendum in 1997 and a single secular system was introduced to replace the previous streams.

The question of separate schools has been most controversial in Ontario and Manitoba. The ending of public support for separate schools in the latter province in the 1890s prompted a national crisis known as the Manitoba Schools Question.

In Ontario, funding for the Catholic separate school system was initially only guaranteed until grade nine under the British North America (BNA) Act. This funding was gradually extended until 1985 when the government of William Davis extended funding to include the last two years of secondary school after having rejected that proposal fifteeen years earlier.

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 rumours that the Catholic Church had instructed its parishoners to not respond to the survey may have produced a skewed result.

The situation in Ontario is valid only for Catholic schools under the BNA Act and ignores other faith groups, this in a region where the city of Toronto claims status as the most multicultural city in the world. Indeed, the provincial policy has been ruled as discriminatory by the Supreme Court of Canada, and on November 5 1999 the United Nations Human Rights Committee condemned Canada and Ontario for having violated Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.