The cost of private school in Vancouver

by Stephen Hui on September 29th, 2011 at 2:52 PM

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How much does it cost to send your kid to a private school in the Vancouver area? The answer: anywhere from $3,000 to $48,000 a year.

This year's edition of Our Kids Canada's Private School Guide—"supported by" the Globe and Mail, according to its cover—landed on my desk this week. The publication's editorial calls private schooling "a viable option for every family".

Our Kids' directory profiles 17 private schools in Metro Vancouver.

The most expensive school is—no surprise—St. George's School at $16,085 to $48,250 per year (the higher figure is for boarding students, I'm told). This Vancouver boys' school has 1,170 students in grades 1 to 12 and an average class size of 20 to 22.

At the lower end, the Vancouver Waldorf School costs $3,200 to $11,500 per year. This coed institution—which is actually in North Vancouver—goes from preschool to Grade 12, has an enrollment of 315, and an average class size of 12 to 25.

Another pricey facility is the Crofton House School in Vancouver. The cost per year at this girls' school? $16,000.

Meanwhile, the cost of public school? Priceless.

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Comments

5 Comments

Pubic skool

Sep 29, 2011 at 3:21pm

Priceless and worthless.

Natasha

Jan 7, 2013 at 1:06pm

About the same price of daycare

Teacher

Aug 23, 2013 at 2:25am

My son won't be going to SGS.

As an employee at SGS I see behind the veil of secrecy the school does not want outsiders to see.

Bullying is bad, students stealing is absolutely rampant, and cover-ups are the norm.

In the end, this expensive education is not producing well rounded boys as the school would have you believe. Most graduate without basic life skills. There is not Home Economics or Automotive shop, so making a meal or changing a tire after graduation is a challenge for most.

How can a school that is comprised of a huge foreign population teach it's students about patriotism and what it means to be Canadian? It can't. It's something completely lost on these students. Oh sure, they brag about their Remembrance Day ceremony, but it's nothing more than a fancy slide show that reflects on previous St. George's students that were truly patriotic and signed up to serve our country in time of war. But signing up to serve our country today is something completely missed at the school today, as though serving Canada in uniform is beneath these students. (You'll never see a local military recruiter walking the halls of SGS, but you'll see representation from a whole whack of Ivy League schools).

Every year, teacher's job descriptions get expanded more and more, there is no Union, so it's either do as we demand or there's the door. As faculty, I have to admit that we still have it pretty good, especially compared to our public school counterparts -but then that's how pre-Madonna's get made and we have plenty of them.

The ones I feel bad for are the staff. The staff (such as custodians, food servers, housemothers, etc.), are so incredibly vital to the operation of the school, they have a wealth of knowledge and sometimes work incredible hours for very low wages only to be ignored by the faculty and senior staff especially the Headmaster. In my 5 years at SGS I have never seen a Headmaster (especially todays) ever acknowledge the staff. Is this the kind of message we want to teach the boys at SGS?

Frederic Gonzalez

Aug 25, 2014 at 11:56pm

I used to work as a custodian at Crofton House School.
Because this school get plenty private money AND public funding; the direction of CHS waste so much : valuable in the garbage, outsourcing of :
- food service.
- cleaning.
- Human resource.
- Christmas light installation.
If they continue, they will outsource teaching!...