Fewer students from abroad are attending public schools in two of B.C.’s biggest school districts.
The Vancouver school board says enrolment has dropped by almost 200 students from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026, especially among prospective students from China, South Korea, and Vietnam.
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In Surrey, that year-to-year drop was 7.5 per cent or close to 900 students in total numbers.
The Vancouver school board also says a reduction in students from the same Asian countries, as well as Italy and Spain.
However, enrolment among students from Germany, Japan, and Taiwan remains strong.
Inflation and economic uncertainty are playing a role, as is the ability of schools, particularly secondary schools, to accommodate foreign students when the schools are closed or over capacity.
But perhaps the biggest influence has been the cap introduced by the federal government to restrict the number of post-secondary students coming to Canada to study.
Surrey school board chair Gary Tymoschuk says that he is not surprised about the drop, because many students use our K-12 system as a jumping-off point to get into our post-secondary system.
“As those students look ahead and say if Canada is putting a cap on post-secondary seats, then that’s going to limit their options,” he explained.
The trend comes as the school district deals with a unique problem: dropping enrollment in general.
“Fewer students that we get into the system, whether they are Canadian citizens or foreign students, does have a financial impact on our system,” said Tymoschuk.
International students pay tuition to attend public school in Canada. In Vancouver, they pay $17,000 a year; in Surrey, it is $16,700.
Local students are funded by the province at roughly $9,000 per pupil a year, although there are additional grants that are valued at $13,000 a year.
The picture looks different for school districts outside the Lower Mainland: province-wide, international student enrolment in public schools continues to climb.
The president of the BC School Trustees Association says that there are pockets of B.C. that are seeing an increase in foreign students.
In the 2023-2024 school year, 11,658 foreign students were enrolled. That increased to 12,174 last year, and is up to 12,963 this year.
“It varies by district. We’ve got different factors at play, like geography, housing costs, program offerings, and broader trends in international student immigration,” Tracy Loffler told 1130 NewsRadio.
