EDMONTON CLASSICAL ACADEMY
The Edmonton Classical Academy is a tuition-free, classical charter school. We are serving grades K-8 for the 2024/2025 academic year, and will expand each year until we offer a full K-12 program.
The school offers an academically rigorous and traditional liberal arts education, equipping students with the virtues, knowledge, and habits befitting free citizens.
Our Difference
Knowledge-rich curriculum
Emphasis on character development
Centred on classic works of art, literature & philosophy
Teacher-led classrooms
Smartphone-free environment
Outdoor education programs
A culture of open inquiry and truth-seeking
What is a classical education?
A classical education aims to preserve, transmit, and build upon the wisdom of past generations — not to dismantle or repudiate it. Our approach relies on knowledge-rich curricula and teacher-led classrooms, and is centred on great and enduring works of art, literature, science and philosophy. Through the study of classical works from around the world, students nurture a sense of philosophical wonder. They learn to inhabit different perspectives, think deeply about life’s most fundamental questions, and develop intellectual, moral, and aesthetic discernment.
Although academically rigorous, a true liberal arts education is not limited to making students narrowly useful or equipping them for material success. Recalling Confucius, we hold that “an educated person is not a tool.” Children are not merely future workers; they are future friends, spouses, neighbours, parents, and citizens. They are bearers of souls, which thirst after knowledge of the true and the good. A classical education prepares students not only to live, but to live virtuously and with purpose.
“There is really only one liberal study that deserves the name — because it makes a person free — and that is the pursuit of wisdom.”
— Seneca
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Why We Wear Uniforms
Ours is a distinctive community, bound together by a shared goal of seeking moral and intellectual excellence in a spirit of friendship. Our uniform is a visible expression of this ideal: our students are part of a community of learners, whose purpose transcends differences in socio-economic status, ethnic, or religious background.
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Great Books and Stories
At the heart of the Alberta Classical Academy program of study is a great books curriculum, which puts learners in direct conversation with enduring works of literature and philosophy from around the world. Students become historically and culturally literate, and learn to think deeply about life’s most fundamental questions.
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Nurturing Virtue and Wisdom
Virtue is about much more than rule-following. It consists in the cultivation of character, whereby students develop the habits and intentions of making good moral decisions based upon clear-sighted reasoning and well-managed passions and desires. The life of virtue is key to both happiness and true freedom.
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Preparing for the Academic Year
To help families prepare for the upcoming school year, our faculty have assembled the following grade level overviews. These documents describe what your child should be able to do prior to starting the school year, and also indicate the skills, knowledge and habits that students will continue to develop as the academic year progresses.
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About Charter Schools
Alberta charter schools are public, tuition-free programs with unique philosophical or pedagogical approaches that are not offered by other school boards. They operate independently from the central bureaucracy of large district school boards, being governed instead by autonomous non-profit organizations.
With Plato, we understand that the pursuit of truth is entwined with the practice of virtue. The highest aspiration of education is therefore to foster moral excellence. Our goal is to help students cultivate the mind and the heart, impart a love of wisdom and beauty, and form the habits of temperance and self-mastery that will enable them to live good, healthy, and purposeful lives.
Guiding principles
“This is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of divine beauty; this makes man immortal.”
— Plato (Symposium)
Frequently Asked Questions
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Our school is be located at 3720 76th Ave. N.W., Edmonton, accessible via the Sherwood Park Freeway and Anthony Henday Drive.
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The Edmonton Classical Academy is open to pupils in grades K-7 in the 2023/2024 academic year. We will then expand the grade offerings each year until we offer a full K-12 program.
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We welcome pupils from all socio-economic, religious, and ethnic backgrounds, and offer a community founded on friendship, conversation, respect for human dignity, and a shared love of wisdom.
Our program is demanding, both academically and in its expectations for student behaviour. It is intended for learners who are committed to seeking moral and intellectual excellence.
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Alberta charter schools are public, tuition-free programs with unique philosophical or pedagogical approaches. They operate independently from the central bureaucracy of large district school boards, being governed instead by autonomous non-profit organizations. This allows us to offer exceptional educational experiences to all interested students, regardless of background, postal code, or income level.
Alberta is currently the only Canadian province with charter schools. Click here for more information on Alberta’s charter schools.
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The Edmonton Classical Academy is a tuition-free public charter school. We do not charge any tuition for program instruction.
Like other public schools, however, pupils are required to provide a small instructional resource fee. Additional fees may apply for enrichment activities such as field trips and extracurricular programming that are not funded by the Alberta Ministry of Education.
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Charter schools in Alberta are non-sectarian, and are not affiliated with any particular faith tradition.
However, we aim to provide an environment that is respectful of children and families’ faith practices, supports students’ moral formation, and orients them toward what is true, good, and enduring.
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Yes. Ours is a distinctive community, bound together by a shared goal of seeking moral and intellectual excellence in a spirit of friendship.
Our school uniform is a visible expression of this ideal: our students are part of a united community of learners, whose purpose transcends differences in socio-economic status, ethnic, religious, or racial background. In wearing their uniforms, students experience a sense of pride and belonging, and are reminded of their obligation to represent their school community well.
School uniforms serve several other important functions. They foster an environment that is conducive to learning by removing potential sources of distraction, anxiety, and peer competition. A uniform, properly fitted, worn and cared for, demonstrates respect for others and for oneself. It also helps to develop the student’s sense of propriety — that is, appropriateness in inward feeling and outward conduct, including through the observance of proper rituals and customs. By cultivating good outward habits in dress and decorum, students begin to internalize these habits. Finally, uniforms can encourage students in the development of an authentic personality, defined not through artificial expressions of individuality, but through the cultivation of inner virtues, talents, interests, habits, and traits that comprise genuine character.
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We deliver the Alberta provincial programs of study using a distinct, classical approach. For example:
• Students will study classical works of literature, philosophy (including sciences and mathematics), history, and art. Where possible, they will rely on primary texts and sources of information.
• The pursuit of truth, beauty, and wisdom informs the approach to curriculum delivery, with an explicit goal of developing pupils’ capacity for clear reasoning and sound moral, intellectual, and aesthetic judgement.
• The curriculum shall be delivered in accordance with the “trivium” progression, in which the emphasis shifts through the stages of grammar in elementary school, logic/dialectic in middle school, and rhetoric in upper secondary school.
• To the extent possible, subjects will be highly integrated and coherent both vertically (across grades) and horizontally (across disciplines).
• In teaching sciences and maths (the classical ‘quadrivium’), we approach these as humane liberal arts, which illuminate the laws and ordering of the cosmos (for a fuller explanation, click here)
We will also be developing our own, unique programs of study to supplement the Alberta curriculum. To view our K-12 curriculum map, visit our curriculum page.