The project, titled the Cardus Initiative, evaluates academic achievements, cultural engagement and spiritual development of adults aged 23 to 39. It compares religious, primarily Catholic and Protestant, to non-religious schools from both the publicly and privately funded sectors.

“The Cardus Initiative will design and conduct data analysis that addresses the question of why religious schools matter for particular student and family outcomes,” said David Sikkink, a sociologist from Notre Dame.

It is estimated that the project, which requires national sampling in both countries and research evaluation, will cost about $300,000 per year.

“We are very excited by it because what it does is it establishes a partner that is a leading credible academic institution,” said Ray Pennings, Cardus’ executive vice-president. “So we bring the strengths of Notre Dame’s academic rigour and we combine that with the policy and translation emphasis that Cardus is able to provide as a think-tank. So you end up with a multi-tiered approach.”

Although the partnership was officially announced on May 24, it is really building on a four-year joint project between the two institutes which produced a 2011 American sample and a 2012 Canadian version.

“What the studies actually show is that non-government schools were achieving the purpose that (Ontario’s) Education Act says is the purpose of education,” said Pennings. “They were doing a better job of it than government schools.”

While non-government schools did a better job at achieving the results outlined by the government in their education policies — academic success and cultural engagement — publicly funded religious schools in Canada seemed to have no impact on their spiritual development mandate.

“In terms of the Canadian report we found that going to publicly funded Catholic schools made virtually no difference in terms of spiritual outcomes,” said Pennings. “On almost every spiritual measure of Catholic education, Catholic schools are not making much of a difference at all.”

These findings prompted the continuation of this study, and hence the partnership, to continue to evaluate these outcomes and determine innovative ways to improve education in an era of ever tightening budgets.

“At the end of the day the important thing in looking at education is not just the inputs but more importantly the outcomes,” said Pennings.

“It’s starting with the outcomes and looking backwards to try to better understand how do we get the outcomes that we are searching for.”