Sunday, May 1, 2011

About the money...

Home learning families often limp along on one income. It's the reality of choosing to have your children with you 24/7: someone needs to be available to be the caregiver for the children, to give them support and attention as fits their developmental and emotional needs. Often, depending on the ages of the kids, that's a full-time job right there.

Families have different ways of making it work, but it often comes down to figuring it out on a penny by penny basis.

This is one of the reasons why Distributed Learning (DL) schools, especially with the current cornucopia of choice, are so popular among home learners. Many parents cannot walk away from difference that $1000, $3000, or even $5000 (in large families!) can make in the lives of their children. I have often heard of children who would not be able to afford to pursue passions like music or dance or sports if it wasn't for the money provided through a DL school. UPDATE: As of 2014, DL programs are only able to provide $600 (or less) towards direct-access resources.

It's also a fact that there are home learning families who, if not "for the money", would gladly choose registration and the freedom from government oversight over enrollment. And, from time to time, people in this situation may feel that it's unfair that DLs appear to be receiving financial preferential treatment from the government, almost as though the registration option is not worth notice. These parents may wish to rattle some cages and ask the Ministry of Education to provide more money for registered families.

But that's because they may not understand this one vitally important thing: the money is never for the family.

School Funding

No DL or registering school in this province is required to give any home learning family any money in any form. In fact, they do not have the legal right, in the case of DL, to provide direct reimbursement, in the form of a cheque or cash, to parents.

Why? Because the money is not for the child or the family. It's for the school.

DL schools are obligated to use school funding to provide an educational program to a child (and that includes children eligible for a special education grant). It's up to them to determine how they will deliver that, including materials, resources, instruction, and support. Because home learning families are a choosy crowd, many DLs do the same thing -- they figure out a way to provide materials and services of a family's choosing through purchase orders or a reloadable Visa card or direct payment to a community-based service provider (like a dance school or music teacher). No money is to land directly in a parent's hand.

Why is that? In 2006, Bill 33 changed the School Act and made it legally clear that DL enrollment is not the same as section 13 registration.

Because, according to law, schools can reimburse section 13 families for home education related expenses--at their discretion. They don't have to, but they most certainly can.

Incentive-Free DL

Earlier in the 2000's, DL schools were competing for students by means of reimbursements. More learners means more money for their programs (and school districts).

Bill 33 clarified that money cannot go to parents by legally identifying Distributed Learning (DL) as a regular school program, bound by the requirements and expectations of every other school in the province. In addition, the DL school contracts with the Ministry clarified that no DLs are allowed to use funds as an enrollment incentive. The Independent DL school agreement, which covers the majority of K to 9 DL enrollment in this province, states that a DL "may not provide financial payments or reimbursements to students or the parents or guardians of Students" and "may not use any of the funding... as an incentive to have a Student enroll."

It's pretty clear. There is no money, not officially, for families enrolling in a DL program. The money is for the school alone. If they choose to supply materials or classes or resources and have figured out a way to pay for those things in a way that fits the law and their MinEd contract, then that's the way it currently works. And, as things currently stand, it means it works for a lot of families.

By the way, the law also says:
82 (1) A board must provide free of charge to every student of school age resident in British Columbia and enrolled in an educational program in a school operated by the board,
      (a) instruction in an educational program sufficient to meet the general requirements for graduation,...
      (c) educational resource materials necessary to participate in the educational program.
(I suspect this means your child should never have to pay additional fees to participate in a class or program offered by your child's DL, but you could check with the Ministry of Education to clarify.)

Registration and the Law

We often get as far as sections 12 through 14 in the School Act when it comes to registered home education in BC and that's where we stop. But there is a lot more there, including "the money" and what a school's responsibilities are to a registered homeschooler.

But there is nothing written that suggests that registered learners are entitled to any money at all.

In fact, as it stands, the Minister of Education, as per the School Act, has the jurisdiction to make orders:
168 (1) (j.2). establishing, for the purposes of section 168.1, the amount a student or a child registered under section 13 may be reimbursed, including
          (i) setting the maximum amount that may be paid,
          (ii) establishing a limit on the number of educational activities or categories of educational activities for which reimbursement may be made, and
         (iii) setting different amounts and different limits for different educational activities or different categories of educational activities,
It's all in the Minster of Education's hands.
168.1 The minister may reimburse a student or a child registered under section 13 for expenses incurred for instruction, examination or certification with respect to an educational activity or a category of educational activities designated by the minister, in the amount established by the minister, if the student or child
      (a) is of school age,
      (b) is resident in British Columbia, within the meaning of section 82 (2), and
      (c) demonstrates a standard of achievement, satisfactory to the minister, in the designated educational activity or category of educational activities.

Fees for Students Registered Under Section 13

Here's an interesting tidbit. According to the School Act, all schools, including those providing registration under section 13 of the School Act, can charge fees.
82 (6) A board must publish a schedule of the fees to be charged and deposits required and must make the schedule available to students and to children registered under section 13 and to the parents of those students and children before the beginning of the school year.
And...
82 (4) A board may require a deposit for educational resource materials provided to students and to children registered under section 13.
     (5) If a board requires a deposit under subsection (4), it must refund all or part of the deposit to the student or child on return of the educational resource materials.

What Must Schools Offer as Part of Section 13 Registration?

It's all in the School Regulation.
3. (1) A school or francophone school that registers a child under section 13 of the Act must offer
         (a) evaluation and assessment services sufficient to enable the parents of the child to determine the educational progress achieved by the child in relation to students of similar age and ability, and
         (b) the loan of educational resource materials that are authorized and recommended by the minister,
                  (i) which, in the board's opinion, are sufficient to enable the child to pursue his or her educational program, and
                 (ii) which will be offered to the child on a similar basis to the offer of such educational resource materials to students.

(2) With the permission of a board, a child registered in a school or francophone school under section 13 of the Act may audit educational programs offered by the board subject to any terms and conditions established by the board, including the payment of any fee.

(3) A child in grade 10, 11, or 12 registered in school francophone school, or independent school under section 13 of the Act may enroll in all or part of an educational program that is
         (a) offered by a board or an independent school, and
         (b) delivered through distributed learning.

Note: If your child in grade 10, 11, or 12 enrolls in a class in a Brick and Mortar school, he will lose his registered status. Your child in those grades can, however, take as many DL courses as she likes without losing her registered status.

There is additional Ministry of Education policy about the responsibilities of Registering Schools (although policies are much easier to change than statutes).

Bottom Line

The government does not want to directly give DL families financial compensation for learning at home.

DL money is for the DL school, so the school can provide an educational program to the enrolled students.

Why? Because it's not fair to the Brick and Mortar families. The Ministry doesn't want to differentiate between the two types of enrollment in terms of services, administration, or relationship to families. The only difference is mode of delivery or "venue".

Unlike DL, however, registered families can receive compensation for educational expenses. But only to a point. When Sections 12 and 13 became part of the School Act in 1989, public schools received $1200 for each registered homeschooler and independent schools received $600. By 1994, that number had been decreased to its current levels of $250 per learner for a public school and $175 per learner for an independent school. Why?

Registration money is for the registering school so it can do the administrivial tasks required and be compensated for the time involved.

I suspect that public schools were not providing much in the way of access to resources to home educating students, so the amounts were dialed down to cover administration costs only. It may also have been that the government was thinking that more money required greater accountability and, instead of increasing oversight, decided to decrease funding. I don't know for sure.

The Alberta government, however, minces no words on the matter. As per the Alberta Home Education Handbook: "The Alberta government uses public dollars to fund education. Funding varies according to the level of public accountability in the program. School authority programs are subject to a higher level of public accountability than home education programs and so receive a higher level of funding."

I'm always amazed at registering independent schools in BC who, at their own discretion, provide up to $150 to compensate home learning families for materials and resources. I'm very grateful to them. And I know that independent schools offer this reimbursement to families as it then takes care of their obligation to loan materials (a headache to administer). Money, however, is not something that registered homeschoolers are entitled to receive. In fact, independent schools, unlike public schools, don't even have to register anyone if they don't want to. They provide this service as a kindness.

No More Money

Most currently registered homeschooling families would balk at "more money". Here's why.

More money for registering schools would very likely mean more oversight for registered families. Money always requires increased accountability to government and to tax payers -- not just for how the money is used, but how effectively the money is being used.

We don't want that.

We don't want to go the way of Alberta where even the least intrusive option (where parents do not follow the Alberta Programs of Studies) requires two home visits a year from certified teachers who "measure progress" based on parent developed learning outcomes as well as basic provincially determined learning outcomes.

This is not even the "online learning program" option, which would be the equivalent to DL in our province. This is the equivalent to our sections 12 and 13, and is much more intrusive than many BC DL options. Sure, home educators get more money per child, but is it worth the price?

It's the same in the Yukon, which once had laws similar to ours that were changed in 2002... and where there is no financial compensation for home educators in any form. Now, "as part of registration, parents are required to submit an education plan. The plan includes the methods of teaching and the resources you will use for the subjects of literacy and numeracy [including "the skills of literacy, listening, speaking, reading, writing, numeracy, mathematics, analysis, problem solving, information processing computing"]. There is no requirement to provide this information for other subject areas." In addition, the children are subject to testing and "the Minister may, in writing, terminate the home education program if the Minister is of the opinion... that the student has failed to meet standards of student achievement, as measured by achievement testing, comparable to schools operated by the Minister or a School Board."

This is very different from BC where it's stated in both law and policy "The school has no authority to approve or supervise the educational program of a homeschooled child."

This is the beauty of registration in BC. This is why our legal status under sections 12 through 14 of the School Act is so precious and deserves to be protected as is. Parents truly are in charge of their children's learning without having to submit plans and learning outcomes to schools or Ministry officials. Our children are not poked and prodded with respect to what and how much they know (and neither are their parents). It is educational freedom at its best.

If preserving our statutory rights to educate our children free of government oversight and involvement means not taking "the money", so be it!

______________________________

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Where are all the DL learners? Part II

After going back through all 69 DL School Reports (yes, we have 69 DL schools in this province), I realized that I could get some of the data I needed all by myself. It was a bit tricky in places, as many schools make errors when they enter their data for the reports. Once or twice, I had to make an informed guess about what the enrollment might be (for example, I had a hunch that the Vancouver Learning Network, through SD 39, might have around 80 kids enrolled from K to 7 based on the other data provided). Most of the hard cold facts, thankfully, were right in front of my nose.

How Many K to 9 DL Learners Are There?

As I mused in Part I, the Grades K to 9 age group is the most likely place where registration is bleeding numbers to DL. Parents who may have chosen registration in the past may now be choosing DL as it becomes the "default" choice in BC home learning culture.

All the numbers below are for K through 9 only because these are the compulsory grades for registration or enrollment. Also, kids in these grades must attend full-time in only one school, unlike grade 10. School leaving age in BC is 16, meaning that the child does not have to register or enroll the fall of the year he or she has her 16th birthday.

NOTE: The data used for the school reports, my source, is compiled from the September 30 submission of the 1701 forms (Student Data Collection). As enrollment is fluid and not fixed, these figures are projections and not final or absolute numbers.

That being said...

The total DL enrollment for 2010/2011, as of September 30, for grades K through 9 was (approximately) 7943.

Yes. 7943. Not close to 30,000 or 50,000 as the reports suggest (or even half of those numbers for this particular demographic). Instead, close to 8000.

By the way, that leaves 7,941 school-aged students who are enrolled in DL for grades 10 to 12, a population I'm not all that concerned about when comparing DL and registration (at this point).

And, here's the really interesting part, more of those kids in that K-to-9 grade range are enrolled in independent DL schools than in public DL schools. There are 3472 K-to-9 kids (approximately) enrolled in public DL programs. There are 4471 K-to-9 kids enrolled in independent DL programs.

That's a difference of 1000 home learners. 56% independent DLs, 44% public DLs. And remember, there are only 14 independent DL schools compared to 55 public DL schools. And only 12 of those independent schools cater to K to 9 compared to 44 public DLs.

The Details

It's even more interesting to look at the different schools (the main "players") and see their numbers.

Heritage Christian Online School has 1322 learners enrolled K to 9. That's almost 17% of the total DL population for this age group in the province.

SelfDesign has 1118 learners enrolled K to 9. That's over 14% of all learners in this category.

Together, these two big DLs have almost a third of the K to 9 DL enrollments for the province: 31%.

So, what about EBUS? Well, EBUS is the actually the 5th largest DL for this age category in the province at 435 enrollments or 5.5%. The two DL programs that beat EBUS out are independent: Traditional Learning Academy (Surrey) with 495 enrollments (6%) and Regent Christian Online Academy (Saanich) with 491 enrollments (6%).

The next biggest public school DL for this age group is New West's Homelearners' Program with 258 enrollments K to 9. That takes in 3% of the population.

It dwindles rapidly from there. As there are 44 public DLs in the province who cater to K to 9, sharing 3472 students, the average student enrollment in a public DL is 79.

I think it's worth noting that out of the 56 DL programs who enroll K to 9, six enroll over 52% of DL learners and four of those six are independent DL schools.

What About the Money?

Together, independent schools take in $17,537,789.

Public schools take in $27,428,722.

And the total funding is $44,966,511 for K to 9 DL in the province or 56% of all DL funding (despite representing only 28% of the DL headcount for all ages).

As you would guess, the big enrollment schools have the big money. Of course, because independent DLs only get 50% of the grant provided to their local school district, a school like EBUS doesn't come out too badly on paper. See the chart to compare total funding amounts based on the K to 9 FTE (full-time equivalent) figure, 7698, which is lower than enrollment for some reason (likely Kindergarten and this year will be the last year for that as all DLs will be required to go full-time for K).


Indep. School

Total DL
Head
Count
K to 9
Head
Count
K to 9
FTE

2010/11 Per FTE Funding
Approx. K to 9 Funding (FTE)






Anchor Academy
470

369
354

$4,119

$1,458,126

Heritage Christian
1698

1322
1311.5

$3,655

$4,793,533


Regent Christian Online
524

491
464.5

$3,796

$1,763,242


Self
Design
1342

1118
1106

$4,627

$5,117,462


Traditional Learning Academy
645

495
475

$3,657

$1,737,075







Total Indep
(12 schools)
5501

4471

4363.3


$17,537,789








Public School

Total DL
Head
Count
K to 9
Head
Count
K to 9
FTE

2010/11 Per FTE Funding
Approx. K to 9 Funding (FTE)






FVDES
1672


183
181

$7,357

$1,331,617


Surrey Connect

3878


156
155

$7,314

$1,133,670


New West
Homelearners' Program

258

258
245.5

$7,307


$1,793,869

SIDES

2554

192
181.6

$7,592

$1,378,707

NIDES

2025

202
194.5

$7,681

$1,493,955

@kool

877

74

73.5

$7,918

$581,973

EBUS
843

435

426.6

$9,931
$4,236,565







Total Public
(44 schools)
22061


3472
3335


$27,428,722









TOTAL DL
Head
Count
K to 9
Head
Count
K to 9
FTE


Approx. K to 9 Funding (FTE)



TOTAL DL
(K-9)
27592
7943
7698

$44,966,511



Are You Surprised? 

I was, a little.

But it doesn't make me less concerned about registration numbers. Here's why.

In 1996/97, before the MinEd put a cap on and formalized public DL programs, there were 4925 registered home learners in our province. There were no numbers for DL that year as school districts weren't yet required to separate them out from their regular enrollments. But, in 1997/98, they were and the enrollment that year, for all grades and ages, was 8362. So, let's generously say it was about that number the year before (although that may be far too generous). That gives us a split of about 37:63 for registered/DL in terms of the overall home learning population (including distance education schools).

In 2010/11, there are 2218 registered home learners and 27,597 enrolled DL students. We know that number is inflated by many young adults and adults doing high school or upgrading via DL, so even when we control for that and compare the registered number (for up to age 19) to grade K through 9 for  enrolled, we get a split of 22:78 registered/DL for home learners across BC.

In 1996, at least 1 out of every 3 home learners was registered (likely closer to 1 out of 2 if we were able to correct for grades 10 to 12). In 2011, only 1 out of every 5 home learners (grades K-to-9) is registered. 

If my mathematical reasoning on this is wrong, please let me know. I'm open to correction. Or if you have a better way to present the relationship, I'd like to hear about that, too.

But, for now, this shows the trend in a different sort of way.

Nope, it's not as bad as I originally thought (7:93). But it's still moving in a certain direction and will likely continue along that trajectory unless more people consider registration for their families.

And why would they want to do that? Well, perhaps that will be a little something for another post.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Where are all the DL learners? Part I

As I've been looking over the numbers in the various Ministry of Education reports, one thought keeps popping up over and over again. It's this:

If there are ~30,000 dedicated Distributed Learners in BC, where are they?

In Victoria, the local support groups have a modest membership (from 100 to 200 families, depending on the group, with a lot of crossover between groups). The big Vancouver list, which has participants from all over the lower mainland, has a membership of just under 800. Other support groups around the province have relatively smaller memberships, from 20 to 100 families on average, depending on location.

Where are all these DL kids hiding?

I decided to take a closer look at the numbers to see what was happening. I created a spreadsheet listing all the Distributed Learning (DL) schools in the province. I looked at the 2010/11 Student Statistics report for each school and determined the following: the head count as of September 30, the number of school-aged children enrolled, the number of adults enrolled, the Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) number, and the Per Pupil Funding Grant as of December, 2010.

Here's what I found...

For public DL programs, as of September 30, there are more adult DL students than there are school-aged students. Yes, that's right.

When I added up the head counts of all the public DL programs, there were 11,812 adults enrolled out of a total of 22,096 DL learners. That means that as of September 30, there were only 10,419 school-aged kids (K-12) enrolled in Public DLs.

That's not all, folks. If you squish those 22,096 public DL enrollments together so that all the students taking one or two DL courses are combined to make one full-time student (eight courses for the year), then the Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) enrollment for public schools was 7447 including the adults. And that funding amount, as of September 30, added up to $59,561,254.40.

That made me curious. What would happen to that number if we took out the adult students? What would happen that number if we took out the Grades 10 to 12 kids who only take a few courses over the year?

So, I sent an email to the Education Reporting Unit to see if they could help me understand what's going on.

And, as of the writing of this post, I haven't heard back yet (so there will be a sequel - yay!).

However, a funny thing happened when I called the Distributed Learning Unit to find out how many courses registered kids 15+ years could take and not lose their registered status (which is as many as they'd like, by the way, for grades 10 to 12). I was passed along to the branch manager, Tim Winkelmans. Tim had actually seen my email so most of our conversation was spent discussing DL numbers (and he assured me that he had someone working on a response for me and that I would be given some additional links to data that I may not have seen yet).

Here are some things that Tim cleared up for me...

On the Ministry School Statistics Report, there are two DL numbers listed. These contain data from the September 30 1701 forms (what all schools submit to the MinEd for the initial head count, which affects the first batch of funding of the year). One is Headcount of Students by Facility Type (and includes both public and independent schools). That number is 27,539 for DL (which was slightly lower than the number I got from adding up all the individual school enrollments (27,597), which I thought was odd). The second number is for Students Enrolled in Programs (public and independent DL schools) and that number was 49,601.

Tim clarified that the first number was for kids who are ONLY enrolled in a DL school. The second number includes both the first number AND kids who are cross-enrolled; that is, kids who are both attending a brick and mortar school and are also taking a DL course (would likely include registered home learners who are taking a DL course or two as well). That means, that we can just forget about those additional 22,000+ kids when we are looking at DL numbers. Those kids wouldn't be registered anyway (unless they already are!).

Tim was quite surprised by my figures involving adult learners. He assured me that might be what it *looked* like as of September 30, but the reality was that DL for Grades 10 to 12 has year-round enrollment. The September 30 number greatly under-represents the total number of DL-only students from September through August for 2010-2011.


This bit here was taking from one of the reports I used for the Trends post. Click to enlarge it, but the fine print under item 3 states:
3) As students can enrol in DL courses at any time, this will under-represent the actual number of students taking courses by distributed learning in a year. The annual total DL enrolment was 33,0222 for 2006-07 and 48,491 for 2007/08. The projected enrolment for 2008/09 is 56,000. [includes both public and independent DL numbers]
I don't know what the projected enrollment is for 2010/11 unless the person compiling the report forgot to change the dates (which may be the case). However, it is important to realize that most of these additional kids are likely very part-time, just picking up a course or two. The FTE will be much lower, so the funding will be much lower. When I crunched the numbers for public DL (without cross-enrollment) using the September 30 numbers, I came up with a total public DL funding amount of $59,561,254.40. When I spoke to Tim on the phone, he suggested that number, by the end of the funding period for 2010/2011, would be closer to $75 million for public DL alone.

What about independent DL schools?

Tim doesn't have much to do with independent DLs as they are outside of the LearnNowBC mandate. The Office of the Inspector of Independent Schools (OIIS) oversees independent DLs directly.

Here's the thing that's interesting about independent DLs. Their headcount (as of September 30) closely matches their FTE. As of September 30, there were 5501 learners enrolled and the FTE was 5148.2. In addition, there were only a total of 36 adults students enrolled in independent DLs. This means that most of those 5501 enrollments are full-time K to 12 learners.

The total funding for all independent DL programs, according to the September 30 head count and the December funding amounts, is $20,567,285.40.

The Big Players

If you are insatiably curious like I am, you may be wondering which DLs have the highest enrollments (and funding). I'm happy to share that with you.

Surprisingly, although public DLs have an FTE of 7411.9 and independent DLs have an FTE of 5148.2,  the *BIG* DLs are independent.

The most popular DL is Heritage Christian Online School with a headcount of 1698 and a FTE of 1656. Although their 50% funding is only $3655, they are the second highest funded DL in the province: $6,052,680.00.

The next most popular DL is SelfDesign Learning Community with a headcount of 1342 and a FTE of 1168. Their funding, with the half-district-funding landing at $4627, means that they are third highest in the province at $5,404,336.00.

So, what about EBUS Academy? The headcount as of September 30 was 843 with a FTE of 613.9. The Nechako Lakes School District was allotted funding at $9,931 per student this year, so the grand total for EBUS is $6,096,640.90. This is the highest funding amount that any DL in the province, public or independent, receives.

The Other Numbers

Students taking part-time DL courses (not cross-enrolled) over-inflate the DL numbers so that it looks like there is a lot more funding going toward DL than there actually is. Take Surrey Connect, for example. In terms of headcount alone, it's the largest DL in the province with 3878 learners. So why didn't I pick them as a big player? Because of their FTE. Their FTE is only 629.1 learners, which means that most of their enrollment is part-time and likely Grades 10 to 12. So, yes, on paper that's higher than EBUS. But... their per pupil funding grant is only $7,314, putting their total funding as $4,601,237.40.

Big, yes. But not a program that's competing with K-9 registration.

Because that was my motive for crunching these numbers.

I was trying to determine which programs were most salient to that K to 9 population who may have chosen registration over the Distance Education Schools in days of yore but who are now drawn to DL.

Looking at the trends in student enrollment since 2006 (Bill 33), here's what enrollment looks like for the DLs whose FTE closely matches the September headcount.


DL School

2006

2007

2008

2009
2010
Anchor Academy

329
375
360
478
470
Heritage Christian

897
1120
1293
1577
1698
Self
Design

456
682
755
974
1342
Traditional Learning Academy
313
499
547
576
645

For comparison (enrollment has higher proportion of adult and Grade 10-12 students)

Surrey Connect

620
1434
1155
2059
3878
Vancouver Learning Network
520
1008
1242
1267
653*
SIDES

615
1214
1639
2259
2554
NIDES

604
843
799
1213
2025
@kool

268
406
357
597
877
EBUS

849
857
811
992
843

*missing some data for 2010/11


Here's what registration looks like in that same time period.


This year, the registration number is 2218, another -9.5 decrease.

Someone asked me if I felt any better about the DL numbers once I had taken a closer look at them and realized that most of that 30,000-ish DL enrollment number was made up of  adult or Grades 10 to 12 part-time students. I had to say, no. Not really. The trend is still the trend. More home learning families in BC are choosing DL over registration and registration numbers are falling rapidly. Both Tim Winkelmans and a home learning parent pointed out that there are simply fewer kids in the province. That's true. However, when I told Tim that registration had fallen by 9.5% each of the past two years, he was quite surprised. He indicated that was a much steeper drop-off than what would be expected based on the rate of decline of the school-aged population in BC.

Even More Numbers

For those of you who are interested, here is some of the data from above in chart format. I know it's easier for some folks (like me) to see the big picture when the data is presented like this.

Independent DL Schools 

There are 14 independent DL schools in BC. Theses are only the ones that have fairly robust enrollment numbers. The total at the bottom includes data from all 14 schools.


School

SD

10/11 Head Count

School-Age

Adult

10/11 FTE

2010/11 Per FTE Funding

Approx. Total Funding (FTE)








Anchor Academy
83

470

470

0

426.5

$4,119

$1,756,754


Heritage Christian
23

1698

1689

9

1656

$3,655

$6,052,680


Regent Christian Online
63

524

524

0

487.3

$3,796

$1,849,791



Self
Design
8
1342

1318

24

1168

$4,627

$5,404,336


Traditional Learning Academy
36
645

644

1

609.4

$3,657

$2,228,576







Average

Total Indep

5501

5465

36

5148.2

$3995

$20,567,285




Public DL Schools

There are 55 public DL schools in BC. I've listed the ones with significant enrollment or FTE numbers.









School

SD

10/11 Head Count

School-Age

Adult

10/11 FTE

2010/11 Per FTE Funding

Approx. Total Funding (FTE)








FVDES
33

1672


736

936

594.3

$7,357

$4,372,265


Surrey Connect

36

3878


2138

1740

629.1

$7,314

$4,601,237


Vancouver Learning Network*

39

653


440

213

714.1

$7,513

$5,365,033

New West
Homelearners' Program

40
258

258

0

245.5

$7,307


$1,793,869

SIDES

63
2554

833

1721

510.9

$7,592

$3,878,753

NIDES

71
2025

612

1413

487.7

$7,681

$3,746,024

@kool

73
877

348

529

226.1

$7,918

$1,790,260

EBUS
91
843
704
139
613.9
$9,931
$6,096,641







Average

Total Public

22096


10419

11812

7447

$8001

$59,561,254

 * Missing some of the school-aged enrollment data due to data entry error


All Together Now



10/11 Head Count

School-Age

Adult

10/11 FTE

2010/11 Per FTE Funding

Approx. Total Funding (FTE)







Total Indep
5501

5465

36

5148.2

$3995

$20,567,285

Total Public
22061

10384

11812

7411.9

$8001

$59,305,235






Average

Combined Total
27597

15884

11848

12595.2


$6362

$80,128,539


Please feel free to ask any questions you may have. I may not have the data at my fingertips, but now I know who to ask. Also, I'm happy to forward my complete excel spreadsheet along to anyone who asks.

Also, in advance, mea culpa. I'm sure there is likely a glitch with the numbers here and there. Although I tried to make sure the information is accurate, my fingers sometimes have a mind of their own. Please feel free to check the figures, data, and calculations yourself if something seems off -- and please let me know if I've made a mistake!

Also, it's important to know that these numbers only indicate what enrollment may have looked like this year based on September 30 projections... but they are not accurate. That data is only available at the end of the school year and is not collated nicely into the student statistics reports.

My next post will hopefully have some information about the proportion of adult students in the FTE amounts. Also, I will take the time to tabulate the numbers for grades K to 9 for each DL listed on my spread sheet, which will likely give us a more accurate number of full-time DL students in BC. This number is important because this age-group is required to be enrolled full-time in a school and cannot cross enroll. The calendar year a student turns 16, he or she is no longer required to either register or enroll in September.

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Now you, too, can make your own obsessive spreadsheet

Go to these links for my sources:

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