More than 30,000 Kelowna students find their seats this week

CENTRAL OKANAGAN – Thousands of students found their way to new classrooms this week as school resumed at all levels.

UBC Okanagan says some 8,400 students began classes this week, while several thousand more started at Okanagan College and another 22,000 started grade school in the Central Okanagan School District.

In a press release, UBCO says 2,250 new undergraduate students were amongst this year’s cohort, with about 61 per cent of those coming from within the province.

The university is also reporting international enrolment has gone over 1,000 for the first time. This included 213 international graduate students and 875 undergraduates.

UBCO principal Deborah Buszard says when the campus first opened ten years ago it had enrollment of just 3,500.

At just under 22,000 students in Kindergarten through Grade 12, enrolment is up slightly in the Central Okanagan School District, according to secretary-treasurer Larry Paul.

“We are up 100 students. Holding our own would probably be a good way of describing it.”

Overall, enrolment has been inching downward for years at the school district.

Okanagan College says it won’t have real numbers until the second week of schoool.

“Students are still applying and others are dropping and adding,” registrar Jane Muskens says.

To contact the reporter for this story, email John McDonald at jmcdonald@infonews.ca or call 250-808-0143. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.