There are approximately 1,500 publicly funded K–12 schools (public, separate, francophone, and charter) operating in Alberta as of the 2023–2024 school year, with that number gradually increasing as new schools open in fast‑growing areas.

Quick Scoop

  • Alberta’s school system includes multiple publicly funded streams: public, Catholic (separate), francophone, and charter schools.
  • When people ask “how many public schools in Alberta” , government statistics usually group all of these publicly funded schools together, since they all receive public money and appear in the same enrolment files.
  • Recent capital plans and construction accelerator programs are adding more schools in Calgary, Edmonton, and surrounding communities to keep up with population growth, so the count is slowly rising year over year.

Why the number is “approximate”

  • Official enrolment files list every individual school (including small colony schools, online schools, and specialty programs), which pushes the total well above 1,000.
  • New schools are opening and some are being modernized or consolidated between about 2024 and 2027, so any single number is a snapshot, not a fixed figure.
  • Business and outreach datasets that only track “high schools” in Alberta show a couple of hundred entries, which matches the idea that the total K–12 count is several times larger once elementary and middle schools are included.

If you need a precise current count

For the most exact, up‑to‑date figure on how many public‑funded schools there are in Alberta right now, the best source is the province’s latest “School and authority enrolment data” or “student population statistics” download, which lists every active school by type for the current school year.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.