A School Is Born: Correlates of Recent Births of Independent Schools in Ontario

Ontario’s population of independent schools does not receive any public subsidies while having to compete with a public system that is well-funded, offers a relative abundance of choice, and performs well from an international perspective. Yet that population has grown steadily despite encountering those unfavorable conditions. To understand this growth, this paper examines correlates of independent school openings between 2011–12 and 2020–21. It draws on organizational ecology frameworks that are typically used to study for-profit businesses but are rarely used to examine schools. Data come from official school registries, coding school websites, and merging census information, and are used to operationalize 3 key concepts: carrying capacity, resource partitioning, and density dependence. Descriptive analyses, logistic regression models, and sensitivity checks suggest the following: new independent schools tend to emerge in International and “Third” sectors, at the secondary level, near other independent schools, and offer additional educational services. We interpret these findings as illustrating that internationalization is extending capacities for independent schools and is helping to enhance their organizational legitimacy, and that school characteristics are likely products of both period effects and organizational changes. Policy implications are discussed.