Alberta will save millions by funding Education Savings Accounts

School choice costs thousands less per student than government-run classrooms

Last February, Albertans rejected the “Alberta Funds Public Schools” petition and its argument that government-run schools should have a monopoly on public education funding. The defeat of the petition, launched by an ATA district representative and aimed at ending public funding for independent schools, was more than a political loss for opponents of school choice. It was a signal that parents want more control over how their children are educated, not less.

Now the province faces a larger question: will Alberta simply preserve its existing school-choice system, or will it become the first province in Canada to give families direct control over part of their child’s education funding through Education Savings Accounts?

The stakes are significant. For thousands of Alberta families, especially those with children with learning disabilities, gifted students or limited rural options, this is not an abstract ideological debate. It is an urgent question of whether parents can assemble the specific educational support their children actually need.

The government appeared to understand this immediately. The day after Elections Alberta confirmed the result, Premier Danielle Smith and Minister Demetrios Nicolaides convened a meeting with 17 organizations on the future of school choice in Alberta, with themes including independent school funding and equitable access to special education supports. The province followed a week later with a seven per cent increase to the education budget. The political opening for major reform is here.

The next step should be Education Savings Accounts: a reform that would be genuinely transformational for children across every region and background, and which no serious political opponent can credibly frame as anything other than pro-child.

The petition’s proponents argued that concentrating all public education dollars in government-run schools would improve those schools. But the argument dissolved on examination, and Albertans sensed it. Budget 2026 made it explicit: it costs the province roughly $5,800 less per student enrolled in an independent school than in a public school. Ending independent school funding would not save money. The province currently directs $295 million to accredited independent schools, which receive partial public funding under Alberta’s education model.

The petition also collided with a deeper Alberta instinct: parents, not bureaucracies, know their children. The province’s school-choice system reflects a longstanding consensus that different children thrive in different environments. Albertans have spent decades building one of Canada’s broadest school-choice systems. Now the province has an opportunity to expand it.

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) would let families direct part of their child’s education funding toward the services and supports their children actually need: specialized tutoring, therapy services, accredited online curricula, post-secondary courses while still in high school or assistive technology. The money stays in education.

Arizona pioneered the model in 2011 and expanded it universally in 2022. Florida now leads in participation with more than 400,000 enrolled students. The families who benefit most are not the wealthy, who would have found alternatives regardless. They are middle-income families, and particularly families of children with learning differences, who lack the resources to patch together private solutions on their own.

Consider who the current system leaves behind, even in a province as choice-friendly as Alberta. Neurodivergent students, those with autism, dyslexia and processing disorders, frequently need a combination of services that no single school can provide. A child with severe dyslexia may need a reading specialist, an occupational therapist and a modified curriculum pace that no institution can deliver within a regular school setting. An ESA lets a family assemble that combination without choosing between an inadequate fit and an unaffordable private alternative.

Rural families face a different gap. Publicly funded charter schools, which operate independently of school boards, serve Edmonton and Calgary. A family in Lac La Biche or the Peace Country is less fortunate. An ESA funds accredited online programming and specialized tutors regardless of geography, a solution that travels across Alberta’s vast footprint.

Gifted students are the third group, chronically underserved in systems that prioritize remediation over acceleration. An ESA could fund concurrent post-secondary enrollment or specialized programming without waiting for a school district to build the program around the child.

These three groups do not fit neatly into any partisan coalition. Parents of neurodivergent children, rural families and gifted education advocates span the full political spectrum. That breadth is not a complication. It is an opportunity.

ESAs are sometimes caricatured as a vehicle for routing public money to wealthy families. That caricature doesn’t hold up. A properly structured Alberta ESA would carry the same accountability framework governing independent school funding today: approved expenditure categories, audited spending and baseline assessments. An ESA student funded at 80 per cent of per-pupil cost saves the province money compared to full public school enrollment. This is not a zero-sum contest between public education and parental choice. It is a system in which both can be stronger.

Opponents will use the language of equity while opposing the only reform that would give middle-income families access to options currently reserved for those who can afford full private tuition. That position cannot hold if the government makes one argument clearly: every child in Alberta deserves a public investment in their education that fits them.

The government has already begun moving along the school choice path: Budget 2026 commits $90 million to expand independent school spaces, and Bill 25 before the legislature would make charter schools permanent. Each step follows the same logic. ESAs are the most significant reform yet.

Dr. Marco Navarro-Genie is vice-president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and co-author, with Barry Cooper, of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).