Quote:
Originally Posted by rreword
Hi,
We are moving to Canada in next month or so mostly in Mississauga or Markham area.
Currently I'm in USA with two school going children.
Here are some of questions I have:
1. How is schooling system in Canada? Same as USA?
2. Public School Vs Private School? is public schools are good enough or have to look for private school?
3. Do they have school district system in Canada same as USA?
4. Could you please suggest any website with school ranking?
5. Any good schools/ school district in Mississauga and Markham area?
I know its lot of questions; but what you can say I want to put my kid in good school for better education.
Thanks in advance for your kind reply,
Rwe
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Being ths son and brother of a teacher I will do my best
Markham has very good schools, missasauge not as good but not nearly as bad as average public american school. Generally sub urbs have no government housing, everyone owns there house, therfore everyone works and there are no apartments only houses and condos. Thus everyone works, no crime or only white collar crime and drug selling but no shootings or violence. very few gangs compared to the usa in terms of violence.
In the subrubs there are few schools and parents donate alot to them, catholic schools for high schools are better because they teach religion in school and a re free here in ontario. The quality of the school is related to the quality of the neighbourhood. Richmond Hill is the second richest city in canada so has a dispropotionaetly large amount of top schools because parents donate money to school alot. As opposed to poor neighbourhoods, no donations so not so nice and worse teachers.
generally speaking bad teachers don't last in good schools because parents sue them and they get moved into the poor area schools because poor parents who barely speak english or are immigrants don't sue
1.catholic schools are geenrally seens as the best unless your willing to shell out $$$ for private schools which do have some prestiege.
2. Public school can be good enough depending on the area.
3. Generally you have zones, you have to send your kid to usually 1 of 2-4 schools in your kids zone. since catholic and public zones over lap, you usually have a choice of at least 4 high schools and 2-3 walking distance elementary schools. You will not be allowed to send your kid to a school outside your zone unless there is no waiting list. generally there is no school good/bad enough to merit the travel to a different zone anyways. For example, 1 school might be bad, but every zone usually has at least 1 very good school.
4. School ranking is all subjective. In my experiences with teachers, which having a bro and a ma as one is alot is this. Most students don't care about class. In a class of 30 kids, 5 dumb 5 smart, 20 indifferent. If your kid wants help most teachers will help, there are some lazy/bad teachers but they exist in all schools and there is no relation between school ranking and success. It is the reverse. "Good" schools in Canada are the ones that prevent medicore students from entering. So yes all their students might go to university but that is only because you needed an 80% to get into the school in the first place along with a clean record. On the other hand some schools have no requirements, so anyone with a pulse can get in.
For example, my high school of 2 years was st. basil's, it is the best catholic school in the west side of town for academics. You need a 65 average to get into the school and you need to pass a math and english test. I went to a highschool in richmond hill for another 2 years and they basically suspend all the "bad students" for the least minor infraction including uniform, until the point where any student who has a slight tendency to break the rules, which tend to be the lower achieving ones but not exclusively leave. They also do nonsense thing like force students to sign contracts that stipulate they will not talk to their friends in school or face expulsion. Sure 99% of these students in the school passed the provincial testing, but that is only because they don't have large new immigrants or esl students, they have a repuation for being overly strict, they stop any low achieveing student from ever entering but that does not mean that it is a good school, it is a school that just kicks out all the poor performing students rather than teach them.
5. They have a joke in teaching that goes like this, when a kid in toronto who is gifted goes into the 905 region he stops being gifted. 905 refers to the subruban region like markham and those schools tend to have fewer new immigrants with bad english skills, they tend to have the more educated fluent in english and hard working in school immigrants. You see neither school is better, it is just the other students who change. The school will generally not matter just avoid public schools in toronto. In fact the catholic school kids make jokes that they don't want to go to public schools to get shot, it is worse than america, as there is more violence in public schools, but it is still nothing compared to usa, and I am pro-usa so don't be offended. Live in Canada but work in usa would probably be the ideal
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