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.