Canadian Compulsory School Laws and Their Impact on Educational Attainment and Future Earnings

📖 The Scoop

The aim in this paper is to provide further evidence of the effects of compulsory schooling, and to present this evidence in a framework for discussing the potential policy implications of these laws rather than in the framework of the returns to schooling literature. [...] For example, a local superintendent in Ontario in 1871 claimed, "irregularity of attendance is the bane and curse of the public schools; it is a log and chain upon the progress of instruction for it blasts and withers the noblest purposes of the best of teachers" [Axelrod, 1997, p 51]. [...] As an inspector for the school system of Prince Edward Island in 1869 stated, Neither the building of School-houses, the furnishing of them, nor the payment of the taxes that go to make up the Teachers' Salaries is left to voluntary effort. [...] A further amendment to the Act in 1901 raised the age of compulsory schooling from seven to fourteen in cities for the full year, and in 1912 this was extended to all municipal districts. [...] Finally, in 1943, the legislature adopted an Act making school attendance compulsory between the ages of six and fourteen, until the end of the school term.

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