By: Brendan Steven

EDMONTON - Here’s an interesting question: which province has the most progressive education in Canada?

I don’t mean left leaning. I mean in sheer numbers: highest test scores, highest parent satisfaction, those indicators which always should form the backbone of the meaning of progress.

It’s not Ontario, or British Columbia, or Quebec. It is in fact Alberta, where conservative values of choice and competition have been implemented within the context of state funded primary education.

Some of my left wing colleagues might chafe at the notion that right wing Alberta could ever produce Canada’s finest public education system. But the OECD has openly acknowledged it as true, citing Alberta as a leading model of education reform the world over. While Canada consistently ranks as third or fourth in the world in primary education, our numbers are buoyed by the glowing success of Alberta. When each Canadian province is isolated from the whole according to OECD rankings, Alberta emerges as the most successful education system in the English speaking world.

Alberta is sitting on a secret of success unlocked decades ago by conservative academics who argued for a voucher system of public education. Accepting the ambitious goal that all citizens deserve an elementary education, the voucher system reverses the classical understanding of education financing. The old model, as used in Canadian provinces outside of Alberta, forces the student to follow the money. Budgets are established for school districts, who allocate it narrowly to a series of public schools with little differentiation in curriculum or specialized programming. Students are assigned a public school based on their area of residence, and are forced by law to attend that institution no matter what its quality. The option of private schooling remains, but with little or no state support for tuition only the very rich can afford to place their children in these programs.

Alberta takes a more effective approach. Implementing what is essentially a voucher system, state financing for schools follows the student rather than vice versa. Parents and children are provided with a wide spectrum of public schools that they can choose to attend. By this method, the government does not force a child to attend one particular institution.

This choice is not as narrow and superficial as picking a building. In an enlightened policy move, Albertan schools are encouraged to compete with one another for students. Unimaginable: a bureaucracy that competes with itself to provide better service. As such, public schools within districts are differentiated. They provide a multitude of programs available for students to choose. Students can specialize in social sciences, trades, mathematics, and a variety of other programs.

Students are still required to complete a mandatory basic curriculum that covers basic skill sets determined by the province. At the same time, they get to engage fully with their own education. They and their parents get to personalize their programming and maximize each child’s experience within the system.

TeachersTV is a British not for profit that provides online resources to teachers in the UK. They recently published a short documentary on the success of the Alberta model. In interviews with teachers in Edmonton, a refreshing attitude of open competition can be seen by faculty. In one scene a trio of principals challenges charter schools to open in their districts. We welcome such competition, they say, because we are confident that the service we provide is better.

That attitude of competitive excellence shouldn’t be unique to Alberta. That should be a model for Canadian school districts across the country. Children everywhere should have the opportunity to have the education they and their parents want. It is that simple model, of choice for families, that has made Alberta great. It is that same model that could make other provinces great too.