Another Look At the Vanishing Public School Student

I know this is something I first addressed back in mid-2024. But there’s delicious new data available, so it’s time for another look.

It seems we’re running out of kids in Canada. And it also seems like the public school systems (in most provinces) are somehow running out of students at an even faster rate. We’ll begin with some numbers.

In Ontario, as of the 2024-2025 school year, there were 29 percent fewer kids in grade one classrooms than there were in grade 12. If the current trend continues, by the time those grade one kids graduate high school in 2036, total province-wide enrollment will have dropped to barely half its 2015 levels.

Those enrollment numbers are roughly reflected in national statistics. As of July, 2025, according to Statistics Canada, there were around 14 percent more 17 year-olds in the population than 5 year-olds. Somehow, despite the fact that Canada’s population has grown by 16 percent between 2014 and 2025 - and despite the median age being at its lowest since 2012 - there are fewer and fewer younger people in the country. And even fewer of those are enrolling in public schools.

Private and independent school enrollments have certainly been climbing - increasing by 24.5 percent between 2007 and 2024:

At the same time, Statistics Canada data shows that the number of families home schooling their children has also been growing. In a reflection of trends in the U.S., COVID lock downs prompted a significant jump in homeschooling - which, at the time, was more or less what we were all doing anyway. But, confounding expectations, many families stuck with it long after schools reopened. And growth has clearly continued since. Here’s what the official numbers look like:

But the private school growth (accounting for approximately 114,000 more seats in 2024 than there were in 2008) - even when combined with the extra 45,000 homeschooling children - is still only a fraction of the total losses public schools have experienced just between 2012 and 2024. Those losses amount to around 720,000 across the country.

What’s going on here? The big story, of course, is the collapse of Canada’s natural birth rate to well below replacement levels. But that doesn’t explain why private schools and homeschooling have nevertheless been growing as much as they have.

I would argue that growing numbers of families are simply uninterested in the product public school systems are selling. Between frightening on-site violence, widespread mark inflation, dismal academic results, and heavily politicized indoctrination where curricula used to be, who can blame parents for seeking alternatives?

It would be interesting to see if we couldn’t find meaningful statistical relationships between failing public schools and dropping birth rates. Sadly, that’ll have to wait for a different time.

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