Special education may be better delivered by independent schools, says report

Independent schools provide cheaper and wide special education programmes and public funding should be made available for them, a Canadian study has found.

The Fraser Institute last month released a study outlining the problems with special education in Ontario's public school system and the opportunity presented by the independent education sector for addressing these students' needs, without increasing the costs to taxpayers.

The median tuition cost for special education students attending independent schools in Ontario is 35 percent less than the average cost of special education per student in the public system.

The new study suggests that families be allowed to spend up to 75 percent of the funds spent on special education students in the public system at the private school of their choice.

"Private schools in Ontario offer a lifeline for exceptional students who may otherwise fall through the cracks in the public system," said Claudia Hepburn, report co-author and the Fraser Institute’s director of education policy.

"Independent schools address the needs of special education students with a wide variety of methods, programmes and philosophies, and at a lower cost than that incurred per student in the public system," she said.

"If these options were made available to all exceptional students, the pressure of competition would encourage the public system to improve for the majority of students who continue to choose it."

The Fraser Institute report is at this web page.