VSB: VSB

VSB Dept: Robinson s memo concludes that by far the most significant reason for the district enrolment decline is demographic decline. Accordingly, the district cannot retain or regain students who don t exist in the first place, according to Vancouver Sun. Using BC Stats annual school-age population, we repeated year-by-year comparison with VSB head-count enrolment. The December memo only shows enrolments graphically, not numerically. Fortunately, an equivalent enrolment graph does include numeric head counts through 2010, on a VSB web page; and we approximate the 2011 count from other sources and perennial publicity about enrolment declines in British Columbia s School District No. 39 jurisdiction of the Vancouver school board VSB surprised us with a recent claim that VSB enrolment has simply tracked decline in our district s population of school-age five to 17 children, and consequently VSB market share public school enrolment as a portion of this youth has been stable, at about 80 per cent. These assertions rest on charts in a VSB memorandum from Scott Robinson, VSB associate superintendent, dated Dec. 10 and available from the VSB website. But numbers readily downloaded from BC Stats, the provincial agency, contradict both Robinson s key chart and his conclusion. In particular, BC Stats provides annual figures estimates, technically for the five- to 17-year-old population in School District 39 and these values are very different from school-age populations plotted for years 2002 through 2011 in the VSB memo. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.