The majority of this minority is geographically based in and around the Island of Montreal. Notwithstanding that almost 85% of this 12% is physically located around this major city, the remainder of the English educational community is finely and widely scattered throughout the whole of the province, is separated by major geographical features, and is without any kind of centering or titular head that focuses educational activity. Against these seemingly overwhelming obstacles of stature and distance, this disparate group struggles to forge an uncertain future within a political culture that denies their past and ignores their present.
Private schools in Quebec:
Private schools have always been a factor in the Quebec school system. Often with histories going back decades and even centuries, this elite system has been a vocal factor in educational policy and decision making for a long time. Furthermore, within certain parameters, the Quebec government has been quite generous and, unlike many other Canadian jurisdictions, has handsomely subsidized private schools.
While exact anglophone figures are sometimes hard to tease out of government statistics, the following generalities nonetheless offer an intriguing insight into the numerical make-up of English education. According to 1999 figures (the most recent available), the total population of elementary and secondary pupils attending English schools is 136,144. Of this total, 122,881 are in the public sector and 13,263 attend private schools.
At first blush, these figures in and of themselves are not too surprising. A fast mathematical breakdown shows approximately 90% of kids enrolled in the general public sector while a small minority of 10% attend private institutions.
'Public-Private' schools in Quebec:
Over the last decade or so, largely in response to the demands of various strident segments of the anglophone community, significant numbers of formerly public schools have been transformed into what might be termed 'public-private' institutions. These schools are, for all intents and purposes, public schools that offer a distinctive academic program to selected candidates on a discriminatory basis. In other words, a pupil can only attend one of these schools if he/she passes a battery of entrance examinations and/or passes through an interview process and/or can afford the uniform and other school trappings (books, supplies, instruments, field trip costs, etc.) that are often necessary.
While less frequent at the elementary levels, the secondary landscape has seen a variety of 'science-mathematics', 'international', and 'immersion' academically focused schools spring up. In large measure, such institutions, operating under the aegis of public school boards and relying totally on public funding for operating and staffing programs, are selecting the more motivated clientele from the pool of available students. Frequently emerging with the name 'academy' tacked onto a revitalized existing school name, these facilities clearly do not accept those students who may be less able or who do not have any self-selected mental, emotional and/or physical standards of each individual school. Mirroring the elitism of the private sector schools, these public-private schools ape a system of questionable moral and ethical value within a supposedly democratic and open society.
The Debate:
Should publicly funded schools openly select only those students that they wish? What happens to those students, for whatever reasons, who do not make it into these public-private institutions? More generally, is the general public school system becoming the dumping ground for those who cannot attend one of these elitist institutions?
These are serious moral and ethical issues for any society to grapple with. For the minority English community struggling for a place and a future within French Quebec, these are critical decisions that may well decide the fate of this slim minority.