Schools & education in Canada

Public school is free and strong by international rankings; the real decision points are childcare cost and where your province stands on tuition.

Public school, K–12

Education is run province by province — there’s no federal ministry — but the shape is similar everywhere: free public school for children of citizens, permanent residents, and most work/study permit holders, from kindergarten through grade 12, with ESL support built into most boards. Quebec is the notable exception: under Bill 101, newcomer children generally must attend French-language public schools, a decision point that catches many anglophone families off guard.

Private school runs $17,000–18,000 a year on average nationally — Toronto and Vancouver closer to $22,000, Alberta’s partially-funded independent schools pulling that province’s average down to under $9,000.

Childcare: a genuine two-tier system

Canada’s federal $10-a-day childcare push has landed unevenly. Quebec ($9.65/day), Manitoba, Saskatchewan, PEI, and Newfoundland & Labrador are essentially there. Ontario and British Columbia are not — BC in particular runs the country’s highest infant-care fees. For a family choosing between provinces, this alone can be a $1,000+/month difference.

University and college

Domestic undergraduate tuition averages $7,734 a year; international students pay over five times that — a gap that’s widened noticeably over the last decade. Quebec runs its own three-tier system with CEGEP (a two-year pre-university step) ahead of a shorter, typically three-year bachelor’s degree; out-of-province and international students there now also face a new French-proficiency graduation requirement, introduced in 2025 and still contested by the English-language universities.

Studying your way to residency

The classic pipeline — study permit, then a post-graduation work permit, then permanent residency through the Canadian Experience Class — is still one of the more direct routes into the country, but the field you study now matters more than it used to: college diploma programs must link to a labour-shortage occupation to qualify for a post-grad permit, while bachelor’s and higher degrees are exempt from that restriction entirely.

How the schools rank

On the OECD’s PISA assessment, Canada places 8th–9th globally across reading, science and math — genuinely top-tier — though scores have drifted down slightly since 2018, a trend worth knowing rather than assuming away.