Catholic schools in the US are seeing their biggest enrolment figures in decades which is being partly attributed to them staying open for almost all of the Covid-19 pandemic while public schools remained shut.

A report in the Wall Street Journal says that enrolment in U.S. Catholic schools increased by 62,000 students—3.8%—from autumn 2020 to autumn 2021. That’s the highest one-year increase recorded in two decades.

Catholic schools across all 50 states opened again in the academic year starting in autumn 2020 and have remained open since.

There are almost 1.7 million pupils in nearly 6,000 Catholic schools in the US.