Winnipeg finding favour as destination for school-aged international students

Manitoba’s largest school division is preparing to welcome a record number of international students in a couple of weeks.

“When I first started doing this, I thought to myself that Winnipeg would be a difficult place to promote,” said Aaron Benarroch, director of recruitment and international education for the Winnipeg School Division.

The longtime Winnipegger said that he’s learned over the last three years that is not the case.

It turns out parents across the globe — in Spain, Germany, Italy, Brazil and Vietnam, in particular — are keen to have their children experience an authentic Canadian winter, he said.

The kindergarten-to-Grade 12 system has largely been shielded from the fallout of Ottawa’s cap on international student enrolment, allowing high schoolers from abroad to apply for extensions to continue their studies in Canada.

Benarroch said he thinks many families simply want to send their children away on a temporary basis to practise English.

WSD launched its international education program with 33 registrants in 2017-2018. This year, its school communities and homestay families are expecting upwards of 185 foreign students.

The St. James-Assiniboia School Division has seen similar growth in its 27-year-old program. Senior administration is anticipating 120 registrants this year — 13 times the size of the original intake.

“I would like to try to take a risk and step outside my comfort zone,” Jaered Bacolod said, as he recalled his decision to pack his bags and move across the world in January 2023.

The now-19-year-old said he traded 40 C in Manila for -40 C in Winnipeg and has no regrets.

He lived with a Winnipeg relative who had told Bacolod’s family in the Philippines that schools here were accepting international students.

Bacolod said the local cost of living and a diverse list of elective courses — he studied aerospace technology at Tec-Voc High School — appealed to him.

“After experiencing it first-hand, I can say Winnipeg is easy-going and it’s pretty cool learning about people with different backgrounds,” he said.

Benarroch identified Canada’s reputation for being safe, welcoming and home to a strong English-language public school system as selling points for parents.

Winnipeg’s relative affordability, compared with tuition rates elsewhere, and diverse extracurricular options are also attractive to exchange students, he said, adding he expects the inner-city program to continue growing through word of mouth.

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Benarroch noted recruiters have recently started to say potential clients are thinking twice about sending their children to the United States because of the prevalence of school shootings and the divisive political climate.

St. James-Assiniboia’s program fosters “important cross-cultural connections and lifelong friendships,” director Alexandra Humphries said in a statement.

The programs also provide revenue for city school divisions and the families across the city the students live with.

Depending on the division, an entire academic year’s worth of international student tuition ranges from $8,500 to $13,750 in Winnipeg.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Maggie Macintosh
Education reporter

Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Free Press. Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she first reported for the Free Press in 2017. Read more about Maggie.

Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.

Every piece of reporting Maggie produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.