A Broad Overview of Educational Administration System in Canada and Some Aspects of its Reform : From a Viewpoint of Education Reform Policies in Japan

In Canada, the jurisdiction of education falls into each province, not the federal government, based on the provision of the Constitution Act. Therefore, historically education system in Canada has been built from the bottom-up at the provincial or local level. Schools or school boards had broad discretion in many areas such as finance, curriculum, and school management. However, these authorities tend to be centralized to the provincial level in the current reform. As a result, many provincial governments have set up provincial curriculum, implemented provincial standardized tests, strengthened control over teachers, as similar to education reform in Japan. Multicultural education and media literacy education shape characteristics of Canadian education, and these issues are promoted at the federal, provincial as well as grass-root level