Catholic school enrolment dips as COVID keeps int’l students home

Enrolment figures in the Catholic Independent Schools of the Vancouver Archdiocese have taken a dip due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but not as large as some may have feared.

The number of students registered in local Catholic schools has dropped between two and three per cent in Sept. 2020 compared with Sept. 2019. According to CISVA superintendent Deacon Henk Luyten, the largest factor in the drop is a dramatic decline in the number of international students.

A small number of families have chosen homeschooling instead of sending their children to school this year, but they did not make as significant an impact on enrolment numbers, he said.

CISVA’s experience is on track with other independent schools in the province, according to Shawn Chisholm, executive director of the Federation of Independent School Associations of B.C. “On average, most brick and mortar schools are reporting a slight decrease in domestic student enrolment and a more severe drop in international student enrolment,” he told The B.C. Catholic.

International students who did not have a permit to study in Canada by March 18 of this year were not able to enter Canada when the 2020/2021 school year began, he said. The federal government has since revised its policies and is allowing K-12 students entry to Canada to study at federally approved learning institutions effective Oct. 20.

It’s not yet known how that will affect enrolment in CISVA schools or what kind of financial impact all of this has had on them, yet. International students pay their own way for their B.C. education, according to the B.C. government, typically paying several times the tuition that a local student pays.

With thousands of international students attending B.C. independent schools there is an “obvious financial impact for schools due to a drop in enrolment and tuition revenues,” said Chisholm. “The financial effect of the loss of international student enrolment will widely vary between independent schools, based on the extent of their international student programs and the number of students they anticipated to attend this school year and how many actually made it to B.C. to attend school.”

Meanwhile, independent online schools have been rapidly expanding, said Chisholm. Many online schools are “having to decline new application requests or have established waiting lists, as they have reached their enrolment capacity.”

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