1960 June: British Columbia Vocational Institute in Burnaby is officially opened June 29th.

October: The report of the Royal Commission on Education [known as the Chant Commission<] is presented to the government. In all, 158 recommendations were made. The report is released to the public in December and generates a great deal of discussion.
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1961 The Department of Education assumes responsibility for the Nelson School of Art. The institute is renamed the Kootenay School of Art.

Advent of the computer age for the Department of Education. The Division of Tests, Standards and Research deploys computers for the first time in June 1961 to process matriculation examination scores.

The ball point pen is officially recognized and authorized for use in provincial schools.  It replaces old fashioned penholders, steel nibs, ink bottles and blotters.

 

1962 A new Federal-Provincial Training Agreement provides for extending vocational schools established a generation earlier under the Dominion-Provincial Youth Training Act (1937-1942) and for establishing new provincial vocational programmes.

New or enlarged British Columbia Vocational Schools are established at Prince George (1962), Kelowna (1963), Nanaimo (1963), and Nelson (1964, incorporating the Kootenay School of Art, [est’d. 1960]). The Agreement also contributes to developing the British Columbia Institute of Technology, which opens in 1964.

Trinity Junior College in Langley, B. C. opens in September with an enrolment of seventeen students and a faculty of seven. The College is controlled by members of the Board of Education of the Evangelical Free Church of America.

Prince George College opens in October, with a class of sixteen students. The college was established by the Roman Catholic Church but is open to students of all faiths.

Macdonald Report on Higher Education is published in December 1962. The commissioned report by John B. Macdonald is entitled Higher Education in British Columbia and a Plan for the Future. It recommends that Victoria College be allowed to become an independent degree-granting instutition; that a four-year degree-granting college be established in the western Lower Fraser Valley; and that two-year regional colleges be established, beginning in the Okanagan and Kootenay districts and in metropolitan Vancouver. Other regional colleges are recommended to serve the Central Vancouver Island region, Kamloops and South Cariboo region, Prince George and the Central Interior; and the eastern Lower Fraser Valley.

 
1963 The Public Schools Act is amended to provide for the establishment of district and regional colleges. A new Universities Act creates three public universities in the province -- The University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and Simon Fraser University. A new private university -- the University of Notre Dame at Nelson -- is constituted by a special charter

 
1964 British Columbia Institute of Technology [BCIT] opens in Burnaby, B. C.

 
1965 Franklin P. Levirs is appointed Superintendent of Education in June. Dr. G. Neil Perry is appointed Deputy Minister of Education, succeeding Dr. J. F. K. English.

The province’s first "district college," Vancouver City College, opens in September in facilities shared by Vancouver Vocational Institute and the King Edward Continuing Education Centre in Vancouver.

Selkirk College in Castlegar, B. C. opens in September 1965.

Campbell River Senior Secondary School is one of the first public alternative schools in the province. The Campbell River programme is devised by the school's controversial principal, John Young.

 
1966 Okanagan Regional College in Kelowna, B. C. opens in September 1966.

Provincial High Schools and Junior High Schools are restyled as Secondary Schools (Senior) and Secondary Schools (Junior).

 
1967 Canada’s Centennial Year. All provincial schools, and most communities in the province, embark on centennial-related projects as a means of promoting nationalism and national unity.

Open-area schools become fashionable: MacCorkindale Elementary School in Vancouver is one of the first new "open-area" schools in the province.

 
1968 The British Columbia Teachers' Federation convenes a Commission on Education and publishes a report entitled Involvement: The Key to Better Schools. The report recommended "individualized programmes" for students, elimination of corporal punishment, and more "experimental schools." Jim Carter, vice principal of Point Grey Secondary School in Vancouver (and later deputy mininster of Education), is one of the report authors.

Alternative schools and alternative, interdisciplinary school programmes are introduced in Vancouver: Point Grey Secondary leads the way with its Experimental Integrated Programme.

Donald Leslie Brothers, a lawyer and MLA for Rossland-Trail, is appointed Minister of Education.

Another provincial community college, Capilano College, opens in North Vancouver.

 
1969 Malaspina College, Vancouver Island's first community college, opens in temporary quarters in Nanaimo in September. In 1971 it amalgamated with the British Columbia Vocational School (1936) and in 1989 was designated a university-college.

The Elementary Correspondence and the Secondary School Correspondence branches are consolidated into a new Correspondence Education Branch, with J. R. Hind as director.

One of the first Montessori Schools in the province is established at Queenswood in Victoria, under the auspices of the Sisters of St. Ann. The directoress of the school is Sister Sylvia Scott. (In the late 1940s, a Montessori-style school had been opened in Metchosin by Mrs. Miriam Thomas.) The first Montessori School in Vancouver opens in 1972.