State of the Nation 2024 – Level of K-12 Distance/Online Learning Activity

In terms of the level of distance and online learning activity across Canada, the total K-12 population in Canada for 2023-24 was approximately 5.5 million students. Based on actual and estimated enrollment data, the number of students engaged in K-12 distance and online learning was 392,454 or 7.1% of the overall K-12 student population (see Table 4).

In examining the data, jurisdictions can be grouped into three categories. First, the majority of provinces in Western Canada continue to have K-12 distance and online learning participation levels that are much higher than the national average (i.e., Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia). Second, while historically Central Canada has consistently had participation levels near the national average, this year only Ontario fell into this category. Interestingly, continued growth in the Yukon Territory has lifted it into this second category. Third, jurisdictions in Atlantic Canada (i.e., New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador) and most jurisdictions in Northern Canada (i.e., Northwest Territories and Nunavut) have a relatively low proportion of K-12 students engaged in distance and online learning. Finally, Manitoba continues to be an outlier in this category with a much lower level of activity compared to the rest of Western Canada.

As it has been stated before, it is difficult to determine why particular jurisdictions end up in each of the categories. There are jurisdictions that have significant levels of legislative and/or regulatory requirements – like British Columbia and Nova Scotia – that are in categories that are at the opposite end of the spectrum (e.g., British Columbia in the high proportion of K-12 distance and/or online learning, while Nova Scotia is in the low proportion category). Similarly, there are jurisdictions that have little legislative and/or regulatory requirements – like Alberta and Manitoba – that are also in opposite categories. There continue to be no real trends for why one jurisdiction has a higher or lower level of engagement in K-12 distance and online learning, and any effort to apply a rationale would be political, ideological, or self-serving.

The 2023-24 school year continued the trend of levels of participation returning to a pre-pandemic trajectory with respect to the proportion of students engaged in K-12 distance and/or online learning (see Table 5 below).

As the nature of data collection stabilized during the early years of this study, the historic trend has been that the level of K-12 distance and online learning activity has increased by approximately 0.5% or less each year. If we exclude the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, which were artificially inflated due to the pandemic,  that trend has existed since around the 2017-18 school year.