Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if
authorship is acknowledged]
According
to a Statistics Canada year-end report demographic changes will have an
impact on Canada’s economy and society, including its education systems. And
the impact will not be trivial. COVID-19 has produced fewer births, lower
numbers of immigrants, fewer inter-provincial migrants, and fewer fee-paying
international students.
As the graph above from Statistics Canada illustrates, population growth, natural increase (births minus deaths), and migratory increase are declining precipitously. To put the decline in perspective, the annual growth in population in 2020 (149,461) was the lowest in number since 1945 and the lowest in percent since 1916. International migration, which accounted for three-quarters of population growth since 2016, declined by more than 50% in 2020.
Some
changes such as the decline in the birth rate are part of a longer trend. The
chart below indicates, over the past 70 years there has been a dramatic decline
in the number of births per 1,000 people. In 1950, there were over 25 births
per 1000 Canadians. Today, the number is closer to 10.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/birth-rate Canada Birth Rate 1950-2021. www.macrotrends.net. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
COVID
will exacerbate the downward trend in the number of children born through its
impact on fertility. Twenty percent of Canadians between the ages of 25 and 44
said they want to delay having children and 14% want fewer children than they
had anticipated having. There are some Canadians in that age group who want to
have children sooner (7%) and want more children that they did prior to the
pandemic (4%).
Even
if these reductions are only temporary, together they will have a dramatic
impact on education in the years to come. Decline in student numbers is
consequential, affecting many, if not all, facets of the school district,
including facilities usage, employment of district staff, and the nature and
types of services the district provides.
If
the Government of Canada increases the number of immigrants to offset the
decline in natural increase (which is much below the replacement level), there
will be increased need for settlement and language services for newcomers for
whom English or French is an additional language. Part of the settlement
process will need to give attention to the social integration of newcomers and
the maintenance of social cohesion. Engagement of parental support--so crucial
for successful schooling--will need to figure even more prominently in school
districts' community outreach. Increased immigration will also put pressure on
schools to ensure the successful educational and social integration of students
who are only just learning the language of instruction.
A
drop in the school age population is not uniform across all regions of the country.
School boards will be under significant economic pressure to close small, rural
schools. School consolidation may produce some economies of scale, but these
may be offset by increased transportation costs, environmental impact, and
diminished small ‘p’ political support for schools.
Forecasting
and planning capacity differ among school districts. Large districts sometimes
have dedicated specialists who can estimate changes in the population at the
district level and help policy makers and educators plan for those changes. Smaller
districts often lack such capacity because there are fewer, if any, in-house specialists.
Differences in capacity would be alleviated if ministries and departments of
education assumed responsibility for student population forecasting.
School
boards would likely resist such a move, arguing that they know their local
conditions better than the ministries or departments. They would also recognize
that ministries in possession of such detailed information would likely point
out schools that might be candidates for closure to save scarce resources. On
the one hand, boards wouldn’t like that. On the other, boards might welcome being
able to blame ministries for forcing boards to close small, less efficient
schools.
Boards
might decide to work together on developing population estimates. They might do
this through the provincial associations to which boards belong or they might
wish to establish a shared service.
The
continuation of COVID makes it unclear whether the declines that have been
observed will continue, what the magnitude of those declines might eventually
be, and what impact governmental policies such as admitting a greater number of
immigrants will have on school age populations.
Regardless of the impact of government policy, demography plays an
important part in educational policy, planning, and resourcing. Boards that
fail to plan for demographic changes put themselves on a precarious economic
and educational footing.