Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today.
My name is Monika Ferenczy, and I'm the president of Canadian Parents for French, for the Ontario branch. With me is Betty Gormley. She is our executive director for the Ontario branch.
We would like to speak to you this morning about French second language instruction in Ontario.
Ontario currently lags behind other provinces and territories in initiatives to enhance French second language, FSL, instruction in Ontario schools. This delay is due to the lack of FSL policy and human resources at the Ministry of Education and a lack of consistency in program offerings and program delivery models in school districts.
Minimal direction and leadership from the ministry has made it necessary for Canadian Parents for French (Ontario) to rely on its volunteer membership to address shortcomings at the local school board level in FSL program delivery. CPF volunteers monitor FSL program access and program quality issues with 60 English language school boards in Ontario.
Cuts to FSL programs and initiatives at the Ministry of Education over the last 15 years have mobilized volunteers to support local school programs by organizing enhancement activities, including performances by French artists, French summer day camps, French public speaking events, French story time at local municipal libraries, rendezvous events to meet other FSL or francophone students, and many other initiatives to promote second official language learning. CPF (Ontario) greatly appreciates funding for these opportunities through the Department of Canadian Heritage.
With the signing of the Canada-Ontario agreement on minority language and second official language instruction in 2005-06 to 2008-09, unprecedented progress was made toward support and revitalization of core French and French immersion programs for Ontario schools. There are currently 968,000 students enrolled in FSL programs in Ontario, and close to 115,000 are enrolled in French immersion.
As a result of the agreement, an action plan was created by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities that outlined activity strategies, expected outcomes, performance indicators, and required accountability measures in order to reach the goal outlined in the Canada-Ontario agreement. For the first time in over 15 years, school boards received two additional memoranda from the Ministry of Education on how funding provided through the agreement was to be used at the local level to enhance FSL programs and how school boards were to report back on FSL expenditures.
A follow-up study by CPF (Ontario) of how the funding was spent at each school board indicated that funds went mostly to basic expenditures for these programs, such as the purchase of material resources and teacher professional development. In many school boards, this funding represented the first ever dedicated funds to actually be spent on FSL programs. The current reporting framework of the Ministry of Education does not require school board financial reports to reveal how annual second official language funding amounts are allocated or spent.
Currently, one individual is assigned at the Ministry of Education to the FSL portfolio, overseeing close to 970,000 students in 60 school boards across the huge geographical expanse of Ontario. Issues regarding equity of access to French immersion programs, such as through transportation or special education services, and program quality are inadequately addressed. With the additional responsibility of administering all aspects of the Ontario action plan, it is unrealistic to assume that Ontario will even approach the goal of Plan 2013 to achieve linguistic duality for the students in this province without additional human resources at the ministry level.
A key component of the Canada-Ontario agreement includes an ongoing consultative process to chart progress toward the goal of doubling the proportion of graduates functional in their second official language over the duration of the agreement. Currently, CPF (Ontario) is represented on the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities advisory committee on French language post-secondary education, whose mandate is to explore ways to improve student access to diverse programs of study in French after high school. CPF (Ontario) has requested the creation of an FSL advisory committee at the Ministry of Education, but one does not yet exist.
Regular communications, status reports, and recommendations continue to be forwarded to the attention of the Minister of Education. The issues presented--