Student enrolment down at English school board

Final enrolment figures for P.E.I.'s English Language School Board show the number of students has dropped by 211 compared to last September.

That's a smaller drop than the province was predicting, but bigger than the board's preliminary estimate from the start of the school year. Board superintendent Cynthia Fleet said the decrease will affect school funding levels for next year.

"We, for instance, have funding that would go to schools for the school budgets, and that's based on population size," she said.

"Usually it would have an effect on teacher allocation as well."

Fleet said she already knows how many teachers the board will have next year, regardless of enrolment, because the P.E.I. government intends to cut 70 teaching positions by 2014. The English board lost half that number this year.

Fleet said based on recent birth rates she expects enrolment will continue to drop as fewer students start kindergarten each fall.

The total number of students in the English board this year is 19,366.