Private schools concerned about auditor’s accusation

Are private schools really the best education option for Ontario students? Parents who are forking over tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees may be asking themselves that question tonight after Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk suggested yesterday that the Ministry of Education does not provide enough oversight for independent schools, and many of them may be handing out bogus diplomas.

The frontier of Ontario’s 11-hundred private schools isn’t exactly the ‘wild west’ — but “Anyone can open a private school, if they have five students and a location.”

“Like any other purchase parents have to be very very careful, and do their homework.”

Ron Rambarran is the principal of Columbia International College – he’s also the Chair of the Independent Schools Association of Ontario — an Umbrella group representing roughly 300 independent, or private schools. He believes the vast majority of Ontario’s private schools are operating with integrity — but —

“In all honesty — I mean there are schools, I call them the fly-by-nighters who will open up and will try to promise students the world. Come to us — we’ll give you marks. Pay us — we’ll give you marks.”

And, he says, any suggestion of bogus academic integrity hurts all independent schools:

“We all get tarred with the same brush, so looking at the Auditor General’s report where they’re suggesting possibly there are schools that are giving out — giving away marks — giving out diplomas randomly, well — that’s a huge concern for us.”

Grade inflation or bogus diplomas can be a problem for Ontario universities too, but with automated admissions systems and 16,000 applications every year Brock’s admissions director Michelle Lea says: “As institutions we pretty well have to take at face value what we get from the ministry at this time.”

And if a school IS cheating: “We have really, no way of knowing that. So, in fairness to the students, generally speaking, we pretty we’ll have to take it as: a grade is a grade is a grade.”

So what does education minister Liz Sandals have to say about this? “The whole issue of credit integrity at private schools which are authorized to issue provincial credits, is something that I take very seriously — and as I said I had already started on beefing up the rules.”

Which sounds pretty good — until you realize that only 400 of 1,100 schools are authorized to issue provincial credits. Which in the long run means parents will have to do their own policing of independent schools because for the most part the Ministry of Education cannot.

Editor’s note: The video in this story has been re-edited from the broadcast version.