Oakville Schools

Oakville schools are among the best in the province and even include some of the best in Canada. The town is renowned for its great education services and this is one of the many reasons why Oakville is such a popular place to raise a family. Not only does the town have many excellent public schools, it has a large number of private schools too, and it’s been said that Oakville has the highest ratio of private schools to student population.

Schools Boards Overseeing Oakville

The great selection of schools that are public are managed by four different school boards depending on what type of school you want to attend. The regular public schools (i.e. English language, non-Catholic ones), are managed by the Halton District School Board (HDSB) which covers all of these types of schools in the Halton Region – Oakville, Milton, Halton Hills and Burlington. In total there are around 60,000 students who come under the HDSB jurisdiction, and that includes a total of 83 elementary schools, and 18 secondary (high) schools.

There’s also the Halton Catholic District School Board serving Oakville. Schools that are managed by the HCDSB are still public schools but with an emphasis on a Catholic education. In total they have 42 elementary schools and 8 secondary in the region.

Then there are the French language public schools, managed by either the Conseil scolaire Viamonde, or the Conseil scolaire de district catholique Centre-Sud. Both of these school boards oversee a larger geographical area than the Halton District Schools Boards. Though they’re responsible for a smaller number of students.

How Many Schools in Oakville?

So how many of these are Oakville schools? About 34% of the Halton Region elementary schools can be found right here in Oakville – that’s 29 in total, and it includes some of the newer schools that have been recently built to keep up with the increasing demand from the many families moving to Oakville and its surrounds.

New high schools are being constructed in the Halton Region too, showing that there’s a great deal of investment going into education. Oakville has 6 secondary schools, plus an additional 3 that come under the Catholic school board, and the Catholic school boards oversees 16 additional elementary schools in Oakville as well.

Oakville Schools Rankings

You’d normally expect to find private schools with the best ratings in a town, but the public schools are actually extremely highly rated for the province. Oakville Trafalgar is ranked 13 out of 725 high schools in Ontario, while Abbey Park is 25th, Iroquois Ridge 32nd, Thomas A. Blakelock 47th, and White Oaks 67th – so that means that five out of six public high schools in Oakville are within the top 100 schools in Ontario.

If you’d like to take a closer look at the school rankings and ratings you can do so on the Fraser Institute School Report Cards website. These ‘report cards’ show how well a school is performing over a number of years so that parents can get a good idea as to how good the school is. You can use their rankings list to help you decide where in Oakville you would like to live. Many parents choose neighbourhoods that are within the catchment areas of the best Oakville schools as this way their child should be guaranteed a place there. Take a look at the HDSB website to discover more about school catchment areas.

Private Schools in Oakville

We haven’t even talked about the private Oakville schools yet! There are numerous schools that don’t come under the school board banners, and they teach a variety of ages: some start as early as pre-Kindergarten while others have students from grade 7 or 9 to 12. This includes the famous Appleby College that was founded in 1911.

If you want to give your child a private education you’ll need to consider the tuition fees as it’s the payment of fees from families that keep these schools operating.

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