My project will attempt to prove that the parents of students on Vancouver’s East Side are sending their children to schools on the West Side due to the fact that these schools are in wealthier communities, and thus driving these schools to a surplus number of students on the west side, while populations in schools on the east side decline. 

I will first begin by looking at the populations of students between the 2001 and 2006 school years and how the numbers for secondary schools change by comparison to the changes in the relative numbers of students living in the catchment area for that school. That is to say (in simpler terms), the relative difference between the actual number of students that should be attending that school and number who actually do. While I have very little initial idea of how the population of youth in the GVRD will actually spatially change, I am fairly certain that based upon media reports I should see a change relating to a decline in the number of students attending schools on the east side of Vancouver, and an increase in the number of students attending schools on the west side. 

Secondly, I will look at the potential explanatory factors of this phenomenon. Average household income per school catchment area (2006 data) and Fraser Institue Scores. I will be looking to see if there is any kind of spatial autocorrelation between the previously mapped population movements of students and these two factors. If my theory is correct, then there should be some correlations between the movements of students attending the various Vancouver schools and the Fraser Institute Scores and Average Income (based on the school areas being more wealthy), however very little correlation between the actual changing populations of students in the catchment areas and these same factors. 

Based on these anaylsis of the data, I will attempt to draw preliminary conclusions on why youth are more likely to attend some schools and not others.

Methodology