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An English-language school board in Montreal reported Wednesday its enrolment will hit an all-time low this year, saying numbers have dropped by nearly 10,000 students since 2000.

While the English Montreal School Board attributes some of its losses to an exodus of families from the expensive downtown core to the cheaper suburbs, the “main enemy is the Quebec language laws,” said official Michael Cohen.

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This year’s decrease is the latest fall in student numbers, dating back to a controversial, decade-old bill that further tightened restrictions on who is eligible to learn in English.

Since opening in 1998, the board, which covers much of the Montreal downtown, has seen enrollment in “free fall,” dropping from a peak of 27,000 students at the turn of the century to this year’s projection of 19,800, Mr. Cohen said.

We’re not getting enough new oxygen into our system

The losses are part of a province-wide downturn in Anglophone students, with most English-language school boards in Quebec seeing fewer students each year — except for those lucky ones in the Montreal suburbs that have benefited from Anglophone migration.