Private School vs Public School in Ontario: An Honest Comparison

The short answer

What Ontario regulates, and what it does not

This is the part most comparisons skip, and it is the foundation of everything else.

Ontario's own page on private schools says they are "businesses or non-profit organizations that must meet requirements set by the Education Act but are independent of the Ministry of Education". Then it lists, in the province's words, what it does not provide for them:

> funding or financial support > regulation > licensing > accreditation > oversight of operations

The next sentence is: "You must do your own research if you wish to send your child to a private school."

The province also states plainly: "We do not endorse private schools. Do not read these lists as endorsements."

None of that means private schools are bad. It means nobody outside the school is checking, so the checking is yours to do.

The legal bar for opening one

To be a private school in Ontario, a school must:

• provide instruction at any time between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. on any school day
• have 5 or more students at or over the required school age
• offer elementary or high school courses

Five students and some hours. Beyond that, the province collects a notice of intention to operate once a year.

Who gets inspected

Ontario inspects "all private high schools seeking (or approved) to grant course credits towards to the OSSD", and those schools "pay a fee each time we inspect them". It does not inspect private elementary schools, or private high schools that do not offer OSSD credits.

Even for the schools it does inspect, the province is clear about the limits. It does not inspect or approve "the condition of premises", "health and safety practices" or "staffing".

And schools it does not inspect "do not need to follow the official Ontario curriculum". They "should offer general elementary or secondary subjects such as mathematics, science, language and social studies". The verb is "should". It is not "must".

The numbers nobody publishes

Ontario keeps a public list of every private school operating in the province. We downloaded it on 21 August 2026 and counted. It held 1,675 schools, stamped "Data last updated: August 19, 2026".

Read those last two rows together. About six in ten of Ontario's private schools are not inspected by the Ministry, and seven in ten belong to no accrediting association either. For a large share of them there is no government inspection and no third-party accreditation.

By level, the list holds 784 elementary schools, 459 that span both, and 432 secondary schools. That elementary figure matters, because private elementary schools are the ones the province never inspects.

One more thing the dataset shows by its absence: there is no tuition column. Ontario collects contact details, level, credit authority, programme type and association membership. It does not collect what any of these schools charge, which is why no official tuition figure exists.

Cost

Free, versus a number you have to ask for.

Public school costs nothing in tuition. There are the usual extras, and they are real for a family on a tight budget, but there is no fee to attend.

For private school, treat any figure you read online with care, including the ones below, because none is official. The directories that rank for this search publish ranges of roughly $4,000 to $26,000 a year for day school, and one puts the top end above $30,000, with boarding approaching $100,000. Those come from businesses that list private schools. Ask the school for its own fee schedule, in writing, and ask what is not included.

Ontario also tells parents to ask whether a school will "enter into contracts with parents regarding fees, refunds and other policies". That question exists because the answer is sometimes no.

If you are weighing the cost of school against the cost of targeted help, how much a tutor costs in Canada sets out the second half of that comparison.

Class size: what the law actually says

Every article on this subject says Ontario primary classes are capped at 20. That is not what the regulation says, and the difference matters in both directions.

O. Reg. 132/12 sets it out:

So a Grade 2 class of 22 is lawful, and a Grade 6 class well above 24.5 is lawful as long as the board's average holds. Anyone telling you the primary cap is 20 is overstating the protection by three children.

Now the other side. That regulation binds school boards. Since Ontario provides no regulation for private schools, no private school in Ontario has a legally required class size at all. A small private class is a choice the school makes, and a choice it can unmake. A public Grade 2 class of 24 is against the law.

Both facts are true at once. Private schools usually do run smaller classes. Public classes have a floor under them that private classes do not.

What the research says about outcomes

This is the question everyone actually asks, and it is missing from the entire first two pages of Google, even though "public vs private school statistics" is one of the searches Google itself suggests.

Statistics Canada studied it and published in March 2015. The finding, in its words: students who attended private high schools "scored 8% to 9% higher on standardized tests than students who attended public high schools".

So private-school students did score higher. The interesting part is why. The study looked at what explained the gap and found that "the socioeconomic characteristics of students and those of their peers" accounted for "about one-half of the difference in average standardized test scores and about two-thirds of the difference in university graduation rates".

Read that carefully, because it is easy to overstate in either direction. About half of the test-score gap traces to who the students are and who they sit beside, rather than to the school. Half does not. There is a real measured difference, and roughly half of it is not the school's doing.

The study is from 2015, and it remains the only Canadian statistical release of its kind. Nobody ranking on this question cites it at all.

What public school is genuinely better at

Six things, and they are not small.

Every teacher is licensed. The Ontario College of Teachers states that "all publicly funded school teachers and administrators in Ontario must be licensed by us and be Ontario Certified Teachers". The College "licenses, governs and regulates the province's teaching profession in the public interest and to protect students". A private school may hire whoever it likes; Ontario's own page says its principals and teachers "don't need to be certified by the Ontario College of Teachers".

Somebody is accountable above the school. A board, a ministry, an inspection regime, and a public complaints path. If a private school is one of the 997 nobody inspects, the school is largely accountable to itself and to the contract you signed.

The curriculum is guaranteed. A public school teaches the Ontario curriculum. A non-inspected private school need not, which is fine if you have chosen its approach deliberately and a problem if you assumed otherwise.

Class size has a legal floor. Imperfect, as set out above, but real, and enforceable.

Special education is an entitlement, not a service level. In the public system it comes with a statutory process and a right of appeal. In a private school it is whatever that school offers, and you should ask precisely what that is before you sign.

It cannot decline your child for convenience. Open admission cuts both ways, and this is the side of it that protects you. A selective school can decline an application, and it can decline to re-enrol.

What private school is genuinely better at

Four things, stated as plainly.

Smaller classes, usually. No legal floor, but no ceiling either, and many private schools do run classes well below the public numbers. Ask for the actual figure for your child's grade this year. A school average hides the range.

A deliberate approach. Montessori, a faith tradition, an arts or STEM emphasis, an International Baccalaureate programme. The freedom that removes the curriculum guarantee is the same freedom that allows a coherent alternative. Sixty of the schools on Ontario's list are Montessori association members.

Fit for a child the mainstream is not serving. A quiet child in a large class, a child who needs a different pace, a child whose interest is narrow and deep. This is the strongest honest case for private school, and it is about that child rather than about school quality.

Choice of the room. You pick the school. In the public system you largely get your catchment, with some programme options inside it.

When neither one is the answer

Sometimes the school is not the variable.

If a child is behind in one subject, moving schools does not address that subject. It changes everything around it and leaves the gap in place. Targeted help in the specific thing that is short is cheaper and faster than tuition, and it does not cost a child their friends.

If a child is unhappy socially, that is worth taking seriously, and it is worth asking whether the problem travels. Sometimes it does.

If the honest reason is that a parent feels a public school is not enough, get the evidence first. Read the report card, ask the teacher a specific question, and read the EQAO result properly. EQAO results explained covers what those levels actually mean, and Ontario report card levels explained covers the separate scale the school uses.

Sometimes the answer is a good public school and a certified teacher for two hours a week.

The questions Ontario tells you to ask

The province publishes a list of questions to ask before entering a contract with a private school. It is the most useful thing on its page, and no article ranking for this search reproduces it. Verbatim:

• Is your school inspected and can it issue an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD)?
• Does your school follow the Ontario curriculum?
• Do you conduct criminal reference checks on staff?
• Does your school have a code of conduct or other discipline policy?
• Do you employ teachers who are members of the Ontario College of Teachers?
• Do you publish your Ontario Secondary School Literacy test (OSSLT) results?
• Do you publish your admissions policy?
• Do you enter into contracts with parents regarding fees, refunds and other policies?
• Do you have a procedure for resolving complaints by parents and students?
• Do you have a policy about access to a student's records, such as the Ontario Student Transcript (OST) or Ontario Student Record (OSR)?
• Do you publish the number of years your school has been in operation?
• Do you have liability insurance for accidents involving students?

Ontario also says to contact the school for its educational programme, how long it has been operating, and its business practices.

Notice what the third question implies. The province thinks a parent needs to ask whether staff have had criminal reference checks. That tells you what is not guaranteed.

You can check any teacher's certification yourself, in about a minute. How to check if a teacher is really certified in Canada walks through it, and what "provincially certified" actually means explains what the licence covers.

If you are going down the private route and the school sets an entrance exam, the SSAT and private school entrance exams in Canada covers that step.

Where a certified teacher fits

Whichever system you choose, the person in front of your child is the variable that matters most.

Ontario agrees, at least for the schools it runs. It requires every publicly funded teacher and administrator to hold a licence, and requires nothing of the sort in a private school. That is a difference in what the two systems require. It says nothing about any individual school.

That standard is the one Genie holds. Genie works only with Canadian Certified Teachers, licensed by a provincial governing body such as the Ontario College of Teachers. Before a teacher sees a student profile, their certificate number and issuing body are checked against the provincial registry, with a live government-ID match. Genie calls this the Trust Engine. Students are matched by course, pace and personality, and parents get a per-lesson record of what was covered and what their child understood.

A certified teacher can also chart which courses a student needs to reach a target programme, then focus the teaching on the subject areas that get them there. If you want the fuller version of that argument, a certified teacher versus a tutor sets it out.