VANCOUVER — Latest national school enrolment figures show British Columbia has the lowest percentage of students studying in the public school system.

Put another way, B.C. has the highest percentage of students in private/independent schools compared with other provinces at 13.1 per cent. This is significantly higher than Quebec, the second-place province for private/independent school enrolment, with 9.6 per cent.

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Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick all had private/independent enrolment rates lower than five per cent. The Canadian average was 7.4 per cent.

The Statistics Canada figures are based on the 2017-2018 school year, when there were 563,244 elementary and secondary school students in B.C. — with 85,000 in the private/independent school system. B.C.’s home-school rate was among the lowest in the country at 0.3 per cent. Yukon and Alberta had the highest home-school rates at three per cent and 1.8 per cent.

The percentage of students in public schools in B.C. has been declining steadily since 1977, when the B.C. government started providing partial funding for approved private/independent schools.