The Canadian School System - The Ontario Edition!

First off, am I the only Canadian on this blog? I'm just really interested. :)

So in Ontario you start school ages 3-4 in Kindergarten. When I was in school this was half a day. You could either be in the morning or afternoon kind. I was lucky enough to be in the morning (which meant I got to go home and watch the Live Action Batman on the Space Station). In Kindergarten, there wasn't much to do other than play with other people your age, and learn how to properly interact with other children. After Kindergarten you go to Senior Kindergarten, where you learn your vowel, and really basic spelling. You still spend most of your time playing, but as you can guess all the toys were educational, or promoted group interaction.

After Kindergarten you move into Primary School (Grade One through Five). Not much interesting stuff happens here until you hit Grade 3 where you start learning French and have your first round of the EQAO Test. In Grade Five you get to learn all about your body and get to start learning about World History and Mythology (of course this is kind of toned down... they like to white wash stuff, make it suitable for the younger audiences). Grade Six through Eight is middle School. You have your second bought of EQAO in Grade Six.

On the EQAO, it's a standardized Government test to check if all the schools in Ontario are teaching the same thing. Your personal marks aren't effected by the tests, but your teachers are. You Graduate Junior Middle School at the end of Grade Eight and then get shipped off to High School.

I went to a public high school (I'm going to ignore the Private School Board and the Catholic School Board because I didn't have anything to do with them, so I don't have a good idea on how they work). Public High Schools can break off in different streams though, you can go to a more Tech oriented school, a more business oriented school etc. I went to two high schools, both of them didn't have specialty programs. You're in high school for 4+ years (some people chose to be there for five, which I did). You have your last EQAO Test in Grade Nine, this one only focuses on Math. In Grade 10 you have a Literacy Test, which exists to prove that you can read and write English. It's really basic, and runs on a pass and fail system.

A note on courses! You get to choose your high school courses, well some of them. You're required to take english all four years, math for three years and gym and french for one year. After that you basically have electives which you choose based on what University Program you want to go into. There are different level english and math courses (Applied and Academic for Grades 9-11 and College, Mixed, or University Level Math for Grade 12). For example, I wanted to go into English and Film Studies, the only course I required was University Level English. All my other electives I was pretty much open to take what I wished (like history, film, psych, etc) meanwhile some of my friends who wanted to go into Engineering, they had to take every different math course offered in Grades 11 and 12 (data management, calculus, linear equations etc).

So congratulations! You made it to University. I'm currently in my Undergrad at Wilfrid Laurier. It's a four year program. Since I'm double majoring I have some required courses I need to take I'll cross out the ones I've completed.:

Two First Year English Courses ie Reading Fiction, Reading Drama
Two First Year Film Courses: Film and Genre, Film and Narrative
Literary Traditions One and Two
Literary Theory
Two Film Theory Courses ie FilmTheory and Mass Media, Film and Gender Theory
Two Film History Courses
Two English Courses Pre 1600
One English Seminar
One Film Seminar

And that's the short list. After your Undergrad you can pursue Grad School (1-3 Years) Your Masters (1-2 Years) Your PHD (1-3 Years).

So there you go. My rant about the Ontario School System. I hope it wasn't too boring :)