Private vs. independent schools: what's the difference?
Find a list of schools
Though often confused, independent schools and private schools are two distinct alternatives to public education.
Welcome to Our Kids.
We’re here to help you find the right school, the right way.
For more than 20 years we’ve worked with leading education and child development experts to explore and improve the school-choice process. The result is a robust suite of tools—used by over 2.6 million families every year—which enable you to choose your best-fit school among the 350+ profiled on this site.
We’re your virtual school-placement consultant: your personal guide to discovering, evaluating, and choosing the right school for your child.
Take 2 minutes now to open your free account. It will give you access to exclusive insights on how specific schools are a fit (or not) for your student’s learning needs.
Though often confused, independent schools and private schools are two distinct alternatives to public education.
Both address the needs of students who desire something different than what public education offers. However, there is a key difference between what institutions are designated private or independent. This distinction lies in their structure and their acquisition of funding.
Private schools are generally understood to be for-profit organizations established and controlled by one or more persons.
Independent most often signifies a not-for-profit school that is accountable to a board of trustees, which operates at arm’s length from the administration. As well, schools referred to as independent often point to their accreditation by a peer review body.
Five provinces where independent schools receive public funding require that they be recognized as accredited by a government body. But in Ontario, for example, independent schools share no across-the-board accreditation. Most independent schools are affiliated with associations that demand specific standards of their members.
Most independent schools are affiliated with associations that demand specific standards of their members.
According to recent statistics, around 119,000 students in Ontario alone attend independent schools and about 349,000 students across Canada. Some of these schools have even been around since the early 1800’s.
They can read, but when it comes to functional literacy—expressing ideas, crafting arguments—some feel that students could, and should, be doing better. [Read more]
We spoke with Tara Silver about what girls need, how girls learn, and how the Linden School has pioneered in all of that. [Read more]
