[mabbo]

Where I'm from (Ontario) there are not very many private elementary or high schools- some, yes, but not many. A good friend of mine went to one, and his parents paid something like $20k per year for him to have that extras opportunity. He's a smart guy, and maybe his schooling was part of that.

But the reason there aren't that many is that the public sector schools are pretty good. Not perfect, but pretty good compared to what we see in many American states. Teachers jobs are hard to get because they're paid well (and yes, they have a strong union, but let's not derail this point into an argument about their merits). As a result there are very diminishing returns on private schools for kids, and so they aren't so common.

What this means is that most kids are being given an equal opportunity, the same strong education, at the cost of slightly higher taxes. We accept that, generally.

The choices when it comes to left or right leaning policies come down to how much society in general invests in children's future vs how much each parent must invest in their own child's future. When you push too far to the right, the entirety of the child's future is based on how much the parent can invest- and when that happens, we have inequality of opportunity.

[microcolonel]

There are 230 private primary and secondary schools in Ontario, most of them are lakeward.

I attended four TDSB schools and I must say, they were pretty awful.

Thankfully I got out of that system before high school. I might have gotten involved with the gangs and hard drug trade associated with my nearest high school.