Official Languages Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2013

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Let me switch to the ladies.

Madam Leclair, I think what you're doing in terms of education and French immersion in Edmonton is absolutely wonderful. To get the levels up to 41% of people doing immersion is also great, and I applaud that. Can you help us understand how the Edmonton Public School Board is actually promoting French immersion education?

[Valérie Leclair]

When we began our renewal project we did have an area where we were looking at marketing. What we tend to do is meet with our French immersion principals two or three times a year and discuss what kinds of marketing tools we want to look at to use.

Areas that we have done in the past are radio announcements, television announcements. We've also done the boards that you place on the roads and have provided information to open houses to the schools. We also have a very extensive website, both from Edmonton Public Schools, but within that we have a website just for languages, which promotes all of the languages we have in our district. We do work very closely as well with our planning department to obtain information, and also with our research department to obtain data so we know where we should be marketing, and if we're looking at radio, which radio stations, and where the population is that we should be targeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Madam Bateman.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses.

I have some questions for Madam Leclair, if I may.

If I heard right, Madam Leclair, you were mentioning that you have 41% of your students enrolled in various immersion programs. That's of particular interest to me because we had other witnesses who had 25% and it was a challenge. Can you confirm that I heard right and that's the number?

[Valérie Leclair]

Actually, there is a correction to that. It is 41% of our students who are enrolled in French programs, so that does include our core French as well.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Okay.

How many of your students are enrolled in full French immersion programming?

[Valérie Leclair]

At this time it's only 8%, which is a number of 3,500 or a bit over. Coming from, I believe we were at something like 1,200, to be now at 3,500 is quite a coup for our district.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

How many children do you serve in your school board?

[Valérie Leclair]

In our district we have 85,000 students.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Okay. That's very interesting.

You spoke in your remarks about a study in terms of your approach of reaching out to bilingual teachers for the French immersion program, and hiring and grooming. Can you speak a little bit more to your strategy on that? That's an overwhelming concern for many school divisions, and for parents, I might add.

[Valérie Leclair]

We struggle just like other districts. We struggle the same as they do. We are, however, very fortunate to have a French university right here in Edmonton, Campus Saint-Jean. Many of their graduates come to us. We also have teachers coming from our main university.

We work very closely with our human resources department, and they do the initial screening. One of the wonderful opportunities that we've developed for our teachers is that, prior to getting a permanent certificate, a new hire will go through what we call a staff language proficiency assessment. It's an assessment that we do of all of their four skill areas to see exactly where they are in their French in reading, writing, understanding, and speaking. They will get a score that will tell them where they are on a scale of one to five .

They can use that information to obtain bursary money from the district to improve their French skills. It can also be used if they feel they need to improve in French culture. Many of our teachers take advantage of that opportunity. Usually, we find that in the summer they will go to immersion programs where they are able to immerse themselves at an accredited university or a place where they are able to use French on a daily basis.

Does that answer your question?

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Absolutely. I very much appreciate that.

If I have time, Mr. Chair, I have one quick question for Professor Dicks.

Professor Dicks, I much appreciated your comments. When we hear that grade 1 French immersion is not available in the one officially bilingual province, it's a shocker. I remember as a former school trustee reading a paper in the early 2000s which you probably are well acquainted with. It basically said that if you want to achieve the best possible results in French immersion, you need to start the programming in grade 4. In my school division, where I was a chair, a policy chair, and you name it, we never did that. There were a number of reasons.

I'm curious about your perspective. Are you aware of that research? Was that the basis for acting on it or changing the level?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Madam Bateman.

Answer briefly, Professor Dicks.

[Dr. Joseph Dicks]

I'm not aware of that research.

Our results cover many years here in New Brunswick. We had a grade 4 entry point in New Brunswick at one point. The research that I've done with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and other school boards shows that the early-starting students perform the best, followed by those in the middle around grade 4, followed by grade 6, which is what one would normally expect on overall proficiency results.

Of course, it depends who those students are. If you have some kind of selection going on in grade 4 and grade 6, your results may be comparable, but you have to remember that you're not talking about the same kinds of populations. You're talking about much more select groups in those cases.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

We'll finish with Mr. Benskin.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I'd like to take a second to commend both of our witnesses for their passion in promoting and maintaining immersion programs and linguistic duality.

Ms. Leclair, I want to know if I understood this correctly. You were responding to Madam St-Denis' question in regard to engaging in outings and various activities outside the classroom. Has this helped your retention rate? Do you think the federal government could help in getting those sorts of programs outside of your district and into other provinces and other French-speaking communities?

[Valérie Leclair]

I absolutely believe it has made an incredible difference for our students to see that French not only exists within the classroom, but also exists outside of the classroom.

We think it's important to attend outings within our community and to be part of national outings. I mentioned the youth ambassador program with French for the Future. These outings have made a huge difference for our students. They are able to realize that there is more to the program than just sitting in a chair and learning to read and write in French.

They come back with a renewed interest and a renewed passion. They share that with the other students in the classroom. We find it has made a huge difference for our students. The retention rate has actually increased for us.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

As part of the potential new programs you spoke of in your speech, do you think the federal government could help in creating programs that make this type of access outside of your walls, for lack of a better way of putting it, more accessible?

[Valérie Leclair]

I believe it is an area in which the federal government could provide some support and that absolutely would benefit all students in Canada. I'm thinking especially of students who come from lower socio-economic homes, where they're not able to afford outings such as this.

I'm thinking of the SEVEC program and how we have sent some of our classes on the SEVEC programs and how they've come back. Some of those students would never have had the opportunity to do that on their own with their parents or to go on an exchange trip or just a trip to Quebec.

Situations where the federal government could provide some support in that area definitely would help.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you.

You have actually segued quite nicely into my second exploration.

We've been doing the study for a while and we've heard about many things. There are many things that have been echoed right across the country, such as accessibility to programs and so forth, but this is the first time I'm hearing things broken down on a socio-economic level. Even the commissioner who spoke before you mentioned that there seems to be difficulty with people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and areas having access to immersion programs.

I wonder if you can elaborate on that a bit more.

[Valérie Leclair]

I will answer your question, and then I'll pass this on to my colleague, Marie Commance-Shulko, who is the French immersion consultant and works very closely with our schools.

We work very closely with our planning department, because they do work with the communities, to find out where we have parents and families who have the desire to learn French. We have found that we are getting a lot of immigrants coming into Edmonton and this is what they want. They want their children to speak French and English. They already speak another language, but they believe that their children, to be truly Canadian, should be able to speak both official languages.

We have been able to open two schools, actually, in areas that are not affluent. These students are doing extremely well in these schools. We are working very closely with all of these schools to make sure, as I indicated in my speech earlier, that all kids have access to French immersion, that it's not a program of elitists.

I'm going to pass this on to my colleague.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Very briefly, please.

[Marie Commance-Shulko, French Immersion Consultant , Support for Staff and Students, Edmonton Public School Board]

No, that's fine.

[Valérie Leclair]

No?

That's fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

I want to thank all of our witnesses for their testimony and their briefs. This has been very helpful in informing us for the writing of our report. Thank you very much for taking the time to be here. It was a very informative hour for us.

Without further ado, this meeting is adjourned.