School Choice in Ontario: What You're Entitled To

Ontario funds four separate school systems, and which ones a family may access depends on rules set out in the Education Act and Ministry policy. This page summarises those rules. It does not offer advice on which school to pick — it sets out what the published policy says you are entitled to.

The four publicly funded systems

Ontario funds English public, English Catholic, French public and French Catholic school boards.[3] Eligibility differs by system.

English public schools

Open to all resident students. Students are assigned to a designated school based on home address, with boundaries set by the board.

English Catholic schools

Admission rules differ between the elementary and secondary levels, which is a common source of confusion.

• Secondary:Under section 42 of the Education Act, any secondary-school-aged student within a Catholic board's jurisdiction may choose to attend a Catholic secondary school.[5][6] This arose from the 1986 extension of public funding to Catholic secondary schools, which was conditioned on admitting non-Catholic students and permitting them to opt out of religious programming.[5]
• Religious education:Board procedures generally require all secondary students to take at least one religious education course and to participate in the school's faith life, while providing that non-Catholic ("open access") students may apply in writing for exemption.[6]
• Elementary:Admission is generally tied to Catholic ratepayer status and baptismal requirements, administered by each board. Requirements vary, so check your board's published admission policy directly.

French-language schools

Admission is governed by section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Education Act's definition of a French-language rights holder.[1] A parent is a rights holder if they are a Canadian citizen and any of the following applies:[1]

• Their first language learned and still understood is French; or
• They received their primary school instruction in Canada in French; or
• One of their children has received or is receiving primary or secondary instruction in French in Canada.

Children of rights holders are admitted to a French-language school on application.[1] Children whose parents are not rights holders may still be admitted through an admission committee — composed of the school principal, a teacher and a supervisory officer — under section 293 of the Education Act.[1]

Note that French-language schools are distinct from French Immersion, which is a programme offered within English-language boards. See our guide to the French immersion research.

Private and independent schools

Private schools charge fees and operate outside the publicly funded system. They are not required to administer EQAO assessments, which is why many do not appear in EQAO's published data or in the rankings on this site.

Catchments and attending a different school

Within a board, your address determines a designated (or "home") school. Boards publish address-lookup tools for this. Most boards additionally operate a process — commonly called optional attendance, out-of-boundary transfer or cross- boundary admission — allowing families to apply to a school other than their designated one. These processes are set by individual boards, typically have annual application deadlines, and generally depend on available space. Consult your board's published policy for its specific rules and dates.

Specialised programmes — French Immersion, regional arts, International Baccalaureate, and similar — are usually offered at designated sites and draw applicants from a wider area than the regular catchment, under separate application processes administered by the board.

Using the data on this site

Once you know which schools you can access, the school pages on this site show each one's EQAO results in context, alongside published demographic and neighbourhood data. Three starting points:

• Look up your designated school by name from the rankings page.
• See every school in your community ranked together on the city pages.
• Put two or three schools side by side, across every published indicator, using compare.

Before drawing conclusions from those numbers, we'd suggest reading what Ontario publishes about schools and what it doesn't, which sets out the documented limits of the available data.