Equity for Some: The Two-Tiered System Behind Online Schools

Inclusive education funding is being used to dismantle public schools in plain sight.

I believe in public education. I also believe that families should have a choice and a voice. But what I see happening in British Columbia is the slow erosion of public education, not by accident, but by design, through legislation and funding structures that push families out of community schools and into alternatives that only some can access.

When the government passed Bill 8, the Education Statutes Amendment Act, 2020, it did more than change wording. It replaced “Distributed Learning” with a new framework called “Online Learning” and created an official list of both public and independent online schools. The government has called this shift “innovative” and praised the “flexibility” it provides families. And for some, that may be true. Many independent online schools do give parents a bigger role in managing the services their child receives through inclusive education funding, sometimes even deciding directly how that funding is used. But for families who choose this option because their neighborhood school cannot or will not support their child, this flexibility is not innovation. It is a last resort.

For families with resources and a child with an inclusive education designation, this created a pathway out. Parents exhausted by underfunded public classrooms could now move their children into online learning programs where funding “follows the student.” Some programs allow parents to influence how inclusive education dollars are spent, subcontracting support workers, pooling resources, and creating small, highly supported learning spaces. For some children, these environments have been life-changing.

But the catch is this: not every child can access this pathway. These opportunities are only available to students with a formal inclusive education category, and in BC that means a diagnosis tied directly to a funding code. If your child does not have a diagnosis, they cannot be coded, and without that code, online schools provide little to no additional support.

With waitlists for public assessments stretching for years, many parents feel they have no choice but to pay thousands out of pocket for a private assessment in order to unlock funding. Those children receive support, and their families can leave. Meanwhile, students without a designation, or families who cannot afford the cost, are left behind in public schools where inclusive education dollars are spread impossibly thin. Supports are rationed. Ratios worsen. The inequity deepens.

The government insists Bill 8 and Online Learning were about providing “flexible options.” But we all know the only time the education system is flexible is when it benefits itself. Instead of strengthening neighbourhood schools, these changes have quietly built a two-tiered system right under our noses, where only some children are funded to leave while others are left behind.

What is being built in British Columbia is not equity.
It is a two-tiered education system.

One tier where students with diagnoses and family resources can leave for flexible, well-funded, parent-directed programs.

And another where students without assessments, without privilege, and without options remain trapped in schools stripped of both resources and diversity.

This is not inclusion.