Last month, I reported on Cato CEF’s most recent private school enrollment survey, which among other things indicated that majorities or pluralities of schools—depending on how pre‑K students were handled—saw enrollment increases between last school year and the current one. Unfortunately, our survey had a high margin of error due to low response rates, but new data are consistent with our findings.

Last week, The Economist reported on enrollment increases in Roman Catholic schools, which appeared to be hardest-hit sector during the pandemic, and are the largest private-schooling sector other than independent schools:

The National Catholic Educational Association is still collecting and analysing the latest pupil data, but its preliminary numbers show increases in most dioceses.

The Brooklyn-Queens diocese in New York, one of the biggest in the country, saw increases for the first time in a decade or more. Nearly 60% of its schools are growing, with many increasing by 10%. Partnership Schools, a network of Catholic schools in New York City and in Cleveland, saw a 16% increase. The diocese of Springfield, in Massachusetts, is up by 13%. Arlington’s diocese, which takes in the suburbs of Washington, dc, increased by 6%. The Archdiocese of Baltimore, the county’s oldest, saw a similar increase. Chicago’s archdiocese, which includes some suburbs, saw a 5% increase. Enrolment increased by nearly 4% in Catholic elementary schools in Philadelphia’s archdiocese.

What’s driving the increase? Consistent with previous findings on school responses to the pandemic, The Economist writes that Catholic schools, like private schools broadly, tended to re-open to in-person instruction more quickly than public schools. “Last autumn many public-school systems delayed reopening and did not offer full-time in-class learning,” says the article. “When Catholic schools reopened, most provided in-person learning. This appealed to families who struggled with remote learning.”

Since publishing our survey findings last month we also received two additional responses via ground mail, which had been disrupted when we were doing our data collection. Incorporating the information from those schools makes our results a bit more positive, with the share of schools reporting enrollment increases between the end of last school year and the beginning of the current one rising from 52.6 percent to 53.5 percent when looking at schools with pre‑K and including pre‑K students. Increasers rise from 47.1 percent to 48.6 percent when looking at all schools and excluding pre‑K students.

On the flip side, the average enrollment change dropped from a gain of 13 to 12 students among schools with pre‑K, and stayed at 7 for non pre‑K. We also saw a dip in the share of schools saying they saw enrollment increases over the course of the previous school year.

The data on our now-retired COVID-19 Permanent Private School Closures tracker also supports the likelihood that private schools have been gaining enrollment, having recorded very few closures since August 2020. Meanwhile, our new Private Schooling Status Tracker, which presents private school opening and closing data for roughly the current school year, has catalogued 20 openings or opening announcements since August 1, 2021, and only 1 closure.

Evidence increasingly indicates that private schools have been seeing something of an enrollment boom over the last year or so. The long-term question is whether the increases will end, and possibly reverse, when COVID ceases to be such a big part of our lives.

We will keep monitoring private schooling “health” trends to find out. And to help make our data as accurate as possible, please send us any information you find about private schools opening or closings.