By Dr. Joseph Woodard

The health of a movement can’t be reduced to the mere numbers—the commitment, confidence, expertise, and cheerfulness of its members count for a lot. But numbers certainly help in resisting political or ideological opposition. Canada’s “woke” provincial teachers’ unions have been annoyed by homeschooling’s “bounce,” during and following the Covid lockdowns. So, with Ontario, B.C., and the Prairie provinces having few or no obstacles to homeschools, the question has been, how many families would stick to it? They do take the threat to their tax revenue and cultural influence seriously. Even free-wheeling Alberta saw a concerted assault on homeschooling during its previous socialist government, and there is safety in numbers.  

Official numbers are hard to find, due to bureaucratic antipathy and benign neglect. However, CCHE’s Government Relations Director Patty Marler has made another yeoman effort to gather all the available stats, and we can get a clear assessment of the trends, despite the uncertainty. The big mystery is benignly neglectful Ontario, which keeps no homeschooling records whatsoever, while being home to 40 percent of Canadian students. Still, the western provinces are friendly, and have relatively complete records, so we can get some idea of the Ontario and federal trends, extrapolating from the western figures. 

An additional wrinkle: growth in the total school-age numbers is also a challenge. Given Canada’s sub-replacement fertility rate, any total growth must result from immigration, and newcomers naturally want to “mainstream” their kids in public schools. That said, we’ll see what sense we can make of what we know. 

The West

Beginning with British Columbia: in 2019/20, BC had a total of 685,000 students, and 26,100 of them were homeschooled, or 3.8 percent. During the 2020/21 lockdowns, that jumped to 39,800, or 5.8 percent. When the schools re-opened, 2021/22, that cohort held at 35,300, or 5.2 percent. Now, two years later, with 710,000 students, 32,700 were homeschooled, or 4.6 percent. This represents a roughly 25 percent increase over pre-Covid numbers—people who tried it, stuck to it, and who are new “cultural ambassadors.”  

Alberta, with 635,000 students in 2019/20, had 13,600 homeschooled, or 2.1 percent. During Covid, that jumped to 24,400 or 3.8 percent, then slid the next year to 21,300, or 3.4 percent. Two years later, 24,600 are homeschooled, an increase of 3,300. However, Alberta’s student population has swelled to 823,000, so they now represent just 3.0 percent of the school-age total. Speculation: if newcomers are bracketed out, the homeschooled will still represent 3.9 percent of the pre-Covid population—parents sticking with it. This may reflect the facts that Alberta provides easy registration, funding of expenses, and very supportive homeschool facilitators—all of which most parents would not know, prior to experiencing it. More: publicly paid facilitators have also encouraged a minor explosion in partially funded homeschool co-ops.  

Saskatchewan and Manitoba are a study in contrasts. Saskatchewan registers online students with the provincial curricula and local boards, so there’s less inclination for parents to go independent, when facing school behavior problems. With a 2019/20 school-age population of 209,000, Saskatchewan had 2,800 homeschooled, or 1.5 percent. During Covid, that jumped to 4,700, or 2.5 percent (with more registered as on-line public students). The homeschooled barely dropped to 4,600 when the schools reopened—2.5 percent—and now, two years later, that number has held steady at 4,600. With a modest growth in the school-aged total to 189,000, that still represents 2.4 percent, a 60 percent increase from prior to the lockdowns. 

With 188,000 students in 2019/20, and religious schools unfunded, Manitoba had 3,700 homeschooled, or 2.0 percent. With Covid, that grew to 8,000, or 4.3 percent, then dropped to 6,200, or 3.2 percent. Now, with 190,000 total students, 5,100 are homeschooled, or 2.7 percent. This is a 38 percent increase over the pre-Covid numbers. Beginning from a significantly lower baseline, not surprisingly, the Saskatchewan cohort grew significantly more, despite that provinces efforts to keep online students in the provincial curriculum. 

Here we must provide some context for the following speculation about Ontario. BC has 364 “independent schools,” with 12 percent of the school-age total, versus 1,586 public schools. Mostly Catholic, these have charitable status and partial funding by meeting basic provincial outcomes, while controlling their own staff, supplemental curricula and the school culture. They are distinct from the constitutionally guaranteed “Separate Schools” in Saskatchewan and Alberta. These are nominally Catholic, but their teachers must have university B.Ed. degrees and join the radical teachers’ unions, who largely control their professional development. To round-out this initial overview: Manitoba has only 54 private religious schools,—Catholic, Mennonite, and Orthodox, with seven percent of the student population, versus 690 public schools.   

Mysterious Ontario

Continuing eastward toward Ontario, here we must speculate. In a previous survey of the “Covid bounce,” 2020 to 2022, we applied a “seven province average,” adding into the mix stats from the Maritime provinces. Yet, homeschooling has had little presence in the Maritimes and the unregulated Ontario homeschooling culture much more resembles the West alone. Like Saskatchewan and Alberta, it has publicly funded Catholic schools (though the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association is a rabidly radical). And like British Columbia, it has robust private schools. So, we’ll come at Ontario, first by defining the “missing students” cohort, and then, comparing it to the four western provinces.   

The last federal census showed Ontario with 2,250,000 school-aged kids; the province has grown by 2.2 percent since then, so we assume a current total of 2,300,000 students. Now, our last analysis suggested that Ontario homeschoolers had gone from 56,000 pre-Covid, or 2.5 percent to 97,000 during the lockdowns, or 4.3 percent. This seems to have dropped to 87,000, or 3.8 percent in the year immediately following. 

For the 2022/23 school year, the public systems claimed 2,056,000 of the new 2,300,000 total, leaving 244,000 unaccounted. The private schools claimed 154,000 of these, leaving 90,000 as likely homeschooled, or 3.9 percent. So now, in the two years since then, the hypothetical homeschooled cohort may have grown by 3,000 kids, holding on to its proportional grown, to just under 4.0 percent, despite growing total school-aged numbers.   

How does this compare to the total western numbers? The four western provinces totaled 1,663,000 school-aged kids in 2019/20. Pre-Covid, there were 46,200 homeschooled, or 2.8 percent. This grew to 76,900, or 4.6 percent, during the lockdowns, but then dropped to 67,400 or 4.1 percent immediately after. Now, 67,000 students are still being homeschooled, but with the school-aged total growing to 1,918,000—to repeat, at least partly due to immigration, the proportion of the western homeschooled has understandably dropped to 3.4 percent. 

In contrast, Ontario homeschoolers possibly grew their number and held onto their 3.8 percent. Speculation: if the school-aged population growth is due largely to immigration, this would suggest that more Canadian-born parents are abandoning the Ontario public school systems, voting with their feet. 

Unfriendly Quebec and Newfoundland

Continuing eastward, however, we now enter the homeschool wasteland. With 964,000 total school-age in 2019/20, bureaucratic Quebec had 5,000 homeschooled, or just 0.3 percent. With Covid, this more than doubled to 11,000, 1.2 percent, then dropped some the next year to 9,600, or 1.0 percent. Two years on, with 1,010 million school-aged, 7,900 are homeschooled, or now 0.8 percent. Apparently the Quebec teachers’ unions have little to fear—except for the longer-term demographic collapse of the infertile and aging provincial population.
Likewise in post-Catholic Newfoundland-Labrador, 2019/20, with 65,000 students, 140 were homeschooled, 0.2 percent. This grew to 545 during Covid, 0.9 percent, then immediately dropped to 319, 0.5 percent. And today, with the demographic slide to 63,000 school-aged kids, 308 are still homeschooled, so the share is holding at 0.5 percent.

The Novice Maritimes

The three Maritime Provinces, with a total of 192,000 school-aged in 2019/20, generally had the least vibrant homeschool culture, but given the Covid restrictions, jumped the most dramatically: from 2,600 or 1.1 percent pre-Covid, to 5,500 or 3.1 percent during, then dropping to 4,500 or 1.9 percent immediately following. Now, with 253,000 school-aged across the three provinces, 3,700 are homeschooled, for 1.4 percent. So, it may be concluded that, from an admittedly small baseline, Maritime homeschoolers are now where the Prairies were, pre-Covid.

How does the state of Canada’s homeschool movement look, three years post-Covid? Quebec and Newfoundland, with roughly 24 percent of the Canadian population, remain politically unfriendly and culturally indifferent. The three Maritime Provinces, with five percent of the population, have shown real growth, but remain marginal. In the end, the movement is centered in the five provinces west of the Ottawa River. Here, the movement total has grown from 102,200 to 157,000 kids: 2.6 percent of school-aged children, pre-Covid, to 4.4 percent during the lockdowns, to 3.9 percent immediately following, to 3.7 percent, three years later (or 4.0 percent, if immigrant-based population growth is discounted).

In the world of public accounts, with funding following the students, a four percent drop in budget allocation is not nothing in the world of teachers unions. Further, for all that there is security in numbers, homeschooling as grown by a solid 54 per cent over just three years. This is blatantly counter-cultural and grounds for apprehension among those whose faith lies in “progress” and bureaucratic expertise. So, bottom line, “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”