DCHP-2

separate school DCHP-2 (August 2016)

• in a compound — Education

  a publicly funded school for students who belong to a religious minority, either Roman Catholic or Protestant.

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — The term was first used in Canada to refer to the establishment of separate tax-funded schools for Roman Catholics or Protestants. In Ontario, where the majority has traditionally been Protestant, separate school often refers to a Roman Catholic school. The right to set up separate schools funded by taxpayers now exists only in certain provinces (Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta) and in the territories, although in the past such schools existed in more provinces. Now-obsolete uses referred to girls' schools (see also separate school ((1)) or segregated schools for Black students (see the 1855 quotation). As Chart 1 shows, despite a number of different meanings in the US, where such schools are generally privately funded (see also DCHP-1, separate school ((1)), meanings 1 & 2), the .ca domain features twice the frequency of the US, with most hits referring to the present meaning.
  J. Donald Wilson asserts the growing importance of separate schools in Canada since the mid-1990s, which few would have predicted only a generation earlier. He summarizes: "The extraordinary growth in the past 3 decades of enrolments in separate and nonpublic denominational schools and the increased political power of denominational groups attest to the importance parents attach to schooling as a means of preserving religio-cultural values and improving economic position." (Wilson in Canadian Encyclopedia reference).
  This meaning is culturally significant, shows a semantic change over the US term (see the fist note) and is also by virtue of frequency Canadian (see Chart 1).
  See also AHD-5, s.v. "separate school", which is marked "Canadian", COD-2, s.v "separate school", which discriminates between Ontario (meaning 1) and Saskatchewan and Alberta (meaning 2), and marks both meanings as "Cdn".

  See also: separate school ((1))  multiculturalism  

  • Separate schools operate independently of public schools and have their own school boards, which are elected exclusively by the minority taxpayers of the denomination in question. In contrast to the US, where such schools are funded privately, Canadians have successfully used constitutional rights in order to secure state funding for such schools (see Canadian Encyclopedia reference). Separate schools in Canada are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education and follow the same basic curriculum as that laid down for public schools. In practice, separate schools are almost always Roman Catholic schools today, but some others exist (see, e.g. the 2016 quotation).