Start of the 2012 school year: more students in primary school, fewer in secondary school

As nearly a million young people return to school these days, the rise in the birth rate of recent years continues to be felt in elementary schools across the province.

In fact, nearly 92,000 young people will start kindergarten this year, about 4,400 more than last year. The increase in the number of kindergarten students will continue until 2016-2017 when their number will rise to more than 97,000, according to forecasts from the Quebec Ministry of Education, Recreation and Sport. (MELS).

The successive increases in recent years have obviously inflated primary school enrollment. In fact, there are 473,000 students there this year, nearly 12,000 more than last year, the equivalent of the population of the city of Lachute!

In high school, however, the number of students continues to plummet. This year, 410,000 teens will attend high school, 13,000 fewer than last year. Remember that barely five years ago, they were 470,000. This is therefore a significant drop. The decline in the secondary school population is expected to continue until 2015, when a low of 394,000 students will be reached, according to the MELS. Then, the number of young people will gradually increase to return to a level similar to 2007 in… 2023.

In addition, approximately 12 % of Quebec adolescents currently attend private secondary school.