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Home | Press Releases | Study Uncovers Extent of School “Credit Mill” Problem in Ontario

Study Uncovers Extent of School “Credit Mill” Problem in Ontario

One school Cardus examined “offered gambling site links on its website”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 24, 2024

OTTAWA – About 29% of Ontario’s credit-emphasis independent schools have “weak legitimacy” and could be so-called “credit mills,” according to an extensive study by Cardus, Can We Call Them Credit Mills? Assessing the Legitimacy of Some Independent Schools in Ontario.

Credit-emphasis schools specialize in offering credits toward the Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) in such a way or to such an extent that it is their primary purpose or identity. Cardus developed a unique method for measuring the legitimacy of 272 credit-emphasis schools in Ontario to gauge the extent to which they offer a genuine education or are more focused on simply raising revenue.

“We hope this study will spur the Ontario government to take a closer look at shady schools,” says Joanna DeJong VanHof, the Cardus researcher and report author. “This will especially protect international students who are often recruited by credit-emphasis schools, promising to help them get an Ontario high school diploma. The findings should also encourage Ontario to improve its relationship with the province’s roughly 1,500 independent schools, the vast majority of which we believe would meet or exceed our legitimacy criteria.”

Measuring Legitimacy of Credit Emphasis Schools

Cardus developed a framework of 17 criteria to help measure credit-emphasis schools’ legitimacy. The framework goes wider and deeper than the Ontario Ministry of Education’s inspection criteria, covering factors such as whether a given school:

  • Clearly identifies its owner(s), principal, and teachers
  • Has facilities conducive to a good learning environment
  • Is a member of an independent school association or has other structures in place for proper governance and accountability

When scored according to the framework, 78 Ontario credit-emphasis schools were found to have weak legitimacy, 156 schools had moderate legitimacy, and 38 schools had strong legitimacy. Yet almost all these schools (251 out of 272) were authorized by Ontario’s Ministry of Education to grant the OSSD. Shockingly, one school that was ministry-authorized to grant OSSD credits offered gambling site links on its website.

“To be fair, many credit emphasis schools serve an important purpose, providing language training in English, enabling mature students to obtain their diplomas, and allowing students the flexibility to study at their own pace,” says DeJong VanHof. “But some give cause for concern and the Ontario government needs to take those cases very seriously.”

Can We Call Them Credit Mills? Assessing the Legitimacy of Some Independent Schools in Ontario is freely available online.

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MEDIA INQUIRIES
Daniel Proussalidis
Cardus – Director of Communications
613-899-5174
media@cardus.ca

Cardus – Imagination toward a thriving society
Cardus is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.