The Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools says for the first time in the school division’s history, their enrolment has exceeded 20,000 students.

As of September 30, 2022, enrolment for pre-kindergarten – Grade 12 students in the division is 20,513. That is 943 more students compared to the same period the prior year and 540 more than projected.

Since June 2022, over 570 students new to Canada have been welcomed into the separate school system. Bishop Filevich Ukrainian Bilingual School, Saskatchewan’s only Ukrainian bilingual school, has experienced the most dramatic increase with the number of students almost doubling because of the number of Ukrainian families fleeing war in their home country.

Board of Education chair Diane Boyko says, “Areas like English as an Additional language and counselling services to support the mental health and well-being of students are going to be stretched. We’ll continue to work with the Ministry of Education to encourage investment in those, and other, important areas.”

The school division has submitted its data to the Ministry of Education and suggests additional funding later in the year to support higher-than-projected enrolment is a possibility.

Saskatoon Public Schools announced their enrolment numbers last week saying in comparison to the last school year, the school division has 786 more students enrolled in Grades 1-8 for a total of 15,932. While secondary schools experienced a slight drop in enrolment from 8,784 in 2021 to 8,776 this year, their Newcomer Centre saw a record number of students and families accessing its services with 776.