DCHP-1 Online

separate school

• 1 Que., Obs. a school for girls.

• 2 Hist. a segregated school for Negroes.

• 3a a school for children belonging to a religious minority in a particular district, operated by a school board elected by the minority ratepayers and financed by taxes imposed on them by the board as well as by grants from the provincial Department of Education. Such schools are under the jurisdiction of the Department and follow the same basic curriculum as that laid down for public schools.

  See also: parochial school  separate church school  separate high-school  separate parish school  

  • This situation obtains substantially in Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the Territories at the present time. Except in Quebec, separate school has come to refer almost exclusively to schools for Roman Catholics. See def. 3b and note.

• 3b a denominational school, especially one operated for and by Roman Catholics.

  • Although separate school is not an official designation in six of Canada's provinces, either because such schools as defined in def. 3a have never existed or because they have been discontinued, the term is widely used in the general sense of the above definition, and has been for over a century.