More students than ever are enrolling in North Carolina’s private schools, according to a new report from the Division of Non-Public Education. The data show that North Carolina’s private schools educated 143,998 students during the 2025–26 school year, a 6 percent increase from the year before.
Enrollment in private schools has been rising in North Carolina for more than a decade. Numbers spiked in 2020–21, however, when many parents, frustrated by school closures and other pandemic policies, began looking for other educational options, including home schools, private schools, and microschools.
Private school enrollment in North Carolina since 2008–09
Source: North Carolina Department of Administration, Division of Non-Public Education
Growing private school enrollment has also been fueled in part by changes to North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship program, which has provided vouchers to help parents afford the cost of private school tuition and fees since the 2014–15 school year. Eligibility to participate in the program was once limited to families under a certain income threshold, but lawmakers removed this restriction in 2023. Now, more than 106,000 students use Opportunity Scholarships to attend private schools.
Number of Opportunity Scholarship recipients from 2014–15 to present
Source: North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority
Rising private school enrollment and growing participation in the Opportunity Scholarship program underscore the need for enough seats to satisfy the demand. The Division of Non-Public Education reports that there are now 997 private schools throughout the state (up from 930 in 2024–25). But are they enough?
The John Locke Foundation’s 2025 “Room to Grow” report, which surveyed existing private schools as well as education entrepreneurs throughout North Carolina, found that although some private schools had empty seats, “most private school leaders reported concerns about capacity and expected increases in demand for their services, yet many face[d] barriers to growth such as a lack of funding or infrastructure.”
Policymakers would be wise to consider ways to ensure that North Carolina is prepared to accommodate growing demand for private schools and has a regulatory and policy environment that encourages entrepreneurship so that founders can start new schools that meet the needs of students and families.
Fortunately, there are a variety of ways to help increase seat capacity in North Carolina. They include:
- Stabilizing funding for the Opportunity Scholarship and ESA+ programs
- Promoting school choice programs to more families who could benefit from participating
- Expanding access to funding for start-up and expansion costs
- Reducing the regulatory burden on starting of expanding schools where possible
- Encouraging effective public/private partnerships
- Promoting educational entrepreneurship
The full “Room to Grow” report is available here.
