About Us

Sometimes people wonder who and what People for Education is. They wonder if we have a hidden agenda, or if we are secretly in league with other organizations. Sometimes the questions about the organization just come up as a matter of course, other times they come up because people don’t agree with either our actions or our positions on issues.

It’s the beginning of a new school year, so it’s probably a good time for a quick update on what we do, why we do it, how we’re funded, and what our overall goal is.

The history

People for Education started in 1996. We were initially a small group of parents in downtown Toronto concerned about fundraising and about cuts to education budgets. When we started there was an atmosphere of division and polarization in the education system. Teachers were fighting with the provincial government; the provincial government was fighting with school boards; and parents were caught in the middle. It was hard for parents to find objective information about what was going on, because all sides in the fights were saying that they were “putting children first.”

We decided there needed to be someone providing information parents could trust. Information that was as objective as we could make it, that was in plain language, and that was based in fact.

We developed a survey that now goes to all schools in the province so that we could report each year on the effects of policy and funding changes on schools. That way parents and school councils could understand that policy wasn’t something abstact and inaccessible. And we hoped that by assisting parents and school communities in understanding that policy eventually has an effect – on our schools, our children, and our communities; that we are all capable of having an effect on policy.

None of the parents who run People for Education are educators – we’re former lawyers, real estate agents, accountants, designers, business women, stay at home parents, editors, and students. Since our beginnings as parent activists in the mid 90s, we’ve matured as an organization, so that now we occupy a fairly unique position on the educational landscape. We are equally at home in the land of parents, of academics, educators and policy makers. In fact, we act as a kind of bridge between all those worlds.

And we rely on dedicated volunteers around the province. Without them we could not do the work we do!

Working for civic engagement

So – our first desire was to engage the public in conversation about education, with a hope that it would help all of us be better advocates – for our own children, for our schools, for our boards and for the public education system itself.

What we didn’t have was a particular attachment to things like methods of teaching. We all cared individually about what goes on inside schools, but as an organization our focus was more on the outside – how do our education policies ensure every child has an equitable chance for success? How are our education policies linked to other facets of public policy? How can we ensure that all families feel that all important sense of belonging in their children’s schools? What is the definition of education? What do we want from our schools? What should our schools look like if they are to meet the needs of the 21st century? Things like that.

Our allegiances

We have been accused at various times of being in the pocket of: at least two different political parties, all of the teachers’ federations, the school boards, urban interests, the status quo etc. We have also been accused of not supporting school councils, only representing urban schools, being too focused on small and northern schools, being too soft on the government, being too hard on the government, not being strong enough against testing, being too strongly against testing.

At various times we have had various components of the education system mad at us – sometimes teachers’ federations, sometimes the province, sometimes some groups of parents, sometimes school boards.

This, in its own odd way, shows that we really are independent.

The work

Currently People for Education works in four main areas:

Our funding

In terms of funding, People for Education has two overriding policies: We do not accept funding from unions or federations who work directly in education, and, though we do accept funding from the province, we ensure that it represents a small enough percentage of our funding that it will never jeopardize our independence. People for Education is either currently funded or recently funded by:

 Atkinson Charitable Foundation
 Canadian Auto Workers
 Canadian Council on Learning
 Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario
 Laidlaw Foundation
 Ministry of Education
 Ontario Trillium Foundation (2006-2008)
 RBC Foundation
 TD Financial
 Toronto Community Foundation.

Funding grants make up approximately $280,000 of our funding. The rest of our funding (approx. $225,000) comes from two sources: memberships, subscriptions, speaking engagements and training; and fundraising – through individual requests for donations and events (two a year – Telling Tales Out of School and the annual Egerton Ryerson Award ceremony).
View our audited financial statements.