Ontario Secondary School Second Language Course Enrolments

Enrolment data covers seven second language course types, including ESL, FSL, and Native Languages, across Ontario's publicly funded secondary schools. The dataset is compiled from school reports to the Ontario School Information System. Data is updated annually, with the latest update in February 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze enrolment trends for specific course codes like ESL or FSL over time.
• Compare student counts across different pathways or destinations for language courses.
• Assess the distribution of enrolment numbers by grade level for programs like ALF or PDF.
• Identify provincial-level patterns in Native Languages (NL) course participation.

Strengths

• Data includes seven distinct second language course categories for granular analysis.
• Enrolment figures are aggregated from all public and Catholic secondary schools in Ontario.
• Privacy is protected by suppressing counts for categories with fewer than 10 students.

Limitations

• Enrolment numbers are rounded to the nearest five starting from the 2018-2019 academic year, reducing precision.
• The dataset only covers publicly funded secondary schools, excluding private institutions.
• Students enrolled multiple times in a course are counted per enrolment, which may inflate unique student counts.

Provenance

Source

Government of Ontario via the Ontario School Information System (OnSIS).

Collection Method

Reported by individual publicly funded secondary schools.

Time Range

Annual data, with methodology changes noted starting in the 2018-2019 academic year.

Freshness

Updated annually, with a last update date of February 2026.

Geography

Province of Ontario, Canada.