My name is Nicole Drouin, and I'm Director General of the Fédération des parents francophones de l'Île-du-Prince-Édouard. Our federation represents parents on all issues relating to education and early childhood in Prince Edward Island.
As regards education in French, we've made enormous progress in Prince Edward Island in the past five or six years. As Ms. Thorne mentioned, the number of French-language schools has increased from two to six. There is now one school per Francophone academic region, which is a good step forward.
Our current priorities are mainly in the area of early childhood. We are affiliated with the Commission nationale des parents francophones, whose main priority for a number of years now has been early childhood. Last year, we were able to work with our partners on the development of a strategic plan to develop early childhood in Prince Edward Island through the support of the CNPF and the Department of Social Development.
There's still a lot to do in this area. To supplement Mr. Landry's remarks, I would say that there are many challenges because needs are numerous. In many cases, families are exogamous, and often hard to reach. It's not easy to provide full services meeting all needs in the area of early childhood. The regions are small, but the clientele is large. It's hard to secure human, financial and material resources. In a minority setting, for early childhood purposes, it's even difficult to get access to books, video cassettes and so on.
According to the research, language develops very early. We're talking about the period between the age of six months and three years. Early childhood services suffer major deficiencies in this area in Prince Edward Island, particularly with regard to exogamous families, where the use of both English and French in the home is common. It is all the more important to provide children with the opportunity to learn French and to access all kinds of activities.
Under the Action Plan for Official Languages, major funding has been allocated to early childhood for research and family literacy. That's good, but there should be more investment in this area. Ad hoc projects are appreciated, but we need longer-term plans in order to extend projects that are helping us in the short term.