For the second straight year, the Avon Maitland District School Board had more elementary-level students registered at the end of October than they expected.
Board Treasurer Cheri Carter says it's a pleasant surprise, after several years of declining enrolment.
The figures for the end of October showed 179 students more than the estimates.
Carter doesn't want to call it a trend just yet, but feels the Board may try to get more information about birth rates in Huron and Perth counties to take some of the risk out of estimating.
She also suggests the estimates would be more accurate if more parents registered their children for the Calling All Three-Year-Olds program, or registered their children before the school year starts.
But according to Carter, "It can get into tricky business there if you're accounting or trying to plan for students that actually don't show up, because you do your estimating and then you also have to use that funds for something so you don't wanna commit the money when we don't actually have the students."