TO:        Minister Demetrios Nicolaides, MLA for Calgary-Bow, Minister of Education and Childcare

FROM: Catharine Kavanagh, Western Stakeholder Director

DATE:  April 10, 2026

SUBJECT: Clarifying Public Reporting of the Alberta Education Student Population Statistics

Cardus is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.

The Government of Alberta’s public reporting of the student population statistics is an essential resource for policy planning, research, and public transparency. However, the current student population statistics are imprecise due to the double counting of the Home Education and Shared Responsibility Populations within the School Authority System numbers. 1 1 See Table 2 of the “Student population statistics,” Alberta, https://www.alberta.ca/student-population-statistics.

There are two types of Home Education students in Alberta, as well as Shared Responsibility students. Two out of those the three types are double-counted in two different categories of the student enrollment statistics. This leads to an overreporting of the total number of students in various School Authority Systems, giving the impression that a higher number of students are enrolled in regular (non-home educated) education in the English Public, Francophone, Separate (Catholic), and Independent school authorities. This has significant implications for capital cost planning and the scale of the ongoing space shortages facing school authorities.

The diversity of educational options in Alberta creates challenges for reporting. There are two types of Home Education in the province: Supervised and Not Supervised, 2 2 “Home education”, Education options, Alberta, https://www.alberta.ca/home-education. as well as an additional stream of Shared Responsibility programs.  However, the two types of Home Education are reported as a single category (Home Education) under the Home Education Population in the Student Population Statistics. Furthermore, there are two categories which currently fall under the Home Education Population heading: Home Education and Shared Responsibility.

1. Home Education includes:
   1. Supervised by School Authority: This is “a home education program supervised by a willing [English] public, separate [Catholic] or francophone school board or accredited funded private school. Eligible for funding from Alberta Education.” 3 3 Alberta, “Home education.”
   2. Not Supervised by School Authority (notification only, non-funded): This is “a home education program not supervised by a school board or accredited funded private school. Not eligible for funding from Alberta Education.” 4 4 Alberta, “Home education.”
2. Shared Responsibility Program: This is a program where a parent provides a portion of the student’s education at home, while a school authority provides between 20% to 80% of the student’s education. 5 5 “Shared Responsibility Program”, Alberta, https://www.alberta.ca/shared-responsibility-program.

Publicly-available data published in January 2025 reported 24,158 Home Education Students and 2,274 Shared Responsibility Students. A detailed breakdown of this data provided to the author by Alberta Education shows that amongst Home Education Students, 23,672 were considered Supervised by a school authority. These 23,672 students were also counted in the Total Student Population of each supervising authority, thus inflating the numbers by over 20,000. The Shared Responsibility population is double-counted as well, which brings the total number of students being double-counted to over 25,000. As illustrated in Table I, the impact of this double-counting is most significant for the independent school authorities, as over 15,000 students who appear to be regular students at independent schools are actually receiving home education (i.e. less than 20% of their education is the responsibility of the school).

TABLE I. Home Education (Supervised) and Shared Responsibility Students by School Authority – 2024/25 6 6 Author's calculations based on student population statistics provided by Alberta Education.

Recommendation 1: We recommend updating the Student Population Statistics – Table 2 Alberta student population by authority system on the Alberta Education website to include a clarifying note stating that the “Home Education” sub-category includes both Supervised and Not Supervised (Notification-Only) students for each academic year.

Recommendation 2: We also recommend adding an additional table to the public report that clarifies the number of Home Education (both Supervised and Not Supervised) and Shared Responsibility students, clearly broken down by school authority for each academic year. The proposed change is illustrated in Table II.

Table II. Home Education (Supervised, Not Supervised) and Shared Responsibility Students by School Authority – 2024/25

The recommended changes to the reporting will facilitate greater clarity and accuracy about the size and changes within the regular, public school population (English Public, Francophone, Separate[Catholic]) and the home-educated, independent, and charter school populations. It will also provide more granular information on the number of students receiving Supervised or Not Supervised Home Education, or Shared Responsibility.

Using public data from the 2024/2025 school year, it appeared that 89,856 8 8 Author’s calculation of this number includes independent schools (48,024 per Table II), charter schools (15,400 per table II), Home Ed Not Supervised (486 per table II), Shared Responsibility (2,274 per table I), and Home Ed Supervised (23,672 per Table I). students were being educated outside the regular, public school systems (10.88% of total student enrollment). However, when the double-counting is corrected, calculations show that only 74,524 students (9.02% of total student enrollment) were receiving education outside this system. Stated differently, the current reporting results in an overestimation of this sub-group by 15,332

Contact 

We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you and assist with future considerations on this issue. Please do not hesitate to contact us at ckavanagh@cardus.ca.