Paul W. Bennett

Paul W. Bennett, Hons. BA (York), B.Ed.(Toronto), MA (York), Ed.D. (OISE/Toronto), is the Founding Director of Schoolhouse Consulting, Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a writer and regular commentator on critical issues in Canadian education. He also teaches the philosophy, history, and politics of education in the Graduate Education Summer Institute at Mount Saint Vincent University.

Dr. Bennett is a widely recognized leader in Canadian education. From 1997 until 2009, he served as Headmaster of two of Canada’s leading independent coeducational day schools, Halifax Grammar School and Lower Canada College. For over 30 years, Paul taught history and social sciences in six different secondary schools, public as well as private, in three provinces: Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. He is the author of three nationally recognized Canadian History textbooks, including Canada: A North American Nation (1988 and 1995), and has twice been a top-ten finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Teaching Excellence in Canadian History.

Dr. Bennett has also played an active role in promoting educational reform. While serving as a Public School Trustee with the York Region Board of Education (1988-1997), Paul founded the Ontario School Board Reform Network (1990) and was a co-founder of the Coalition for Education Reform, an umbrella group promoting higher standards and greater accountability in Ontario public education. Since the founding of the Dominion Institute and the Historica Foundation, Paul has been a strong public advocate in defence of Canadian history in our schools. In 2008-09, he served on the National Advisory Committee for Dominion Institute’s Canadian History Report Card project.

His most recent book, The Grammar School: Striving for Excellence in a Public School World (2009), explores the impact of changes in public education on the fate of a school pursuing higher educational standards.