Official Languages Committee on April 23rd, 2013

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

Yes, of course, and it really is very well supported. I would imagine that each province works differently, but in the case of what our school board receives for education, there is a per-student basis. There is another sort of fund that is dedicated to French as a second language. That money comes from the federal government, and it is granted to the provinces. I want to emphasize above all that without this support, I believe that you would see an enormous reduction in immersion and French as a second language programs. This support is therefore absolutely critical, particularly in the provinces.

Naturally, in a city such as Ottawa, it is quite evident that parents are especially willing, but in other provinces, even in other parts of Ontario, it would be very difficult to maintain these programs if those supplementary funds were not available.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

I know that you are the director of education, but I would like you to talk to us a bit about extracurricular activities. In my opinion, they are really quite important. I think that half of one's learning is done during such activities.

What needs to be done to reinforce learning French through extracurricular activities?

That can sometimes present challenges.

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

At the school board level, we definitely saw the importance of extracurricular activities for parents, and for children in particular. This year has been a very good example. Naturally, it is very important.

We are lucky to have a great deal of staff available to support these activities, outside of classroom hours and in French. We are also lucky to be in contact with the community as well as with parents capable of expressing themselves in French. All of that is very good and very important. Naturally, the possibility to take advantage of activities here, in the city, or outside of it, is also very significant.

There is now a reality which was not as evident before in our classrooms: that is the importance of the international community. We now have all sorts of technology available to us. At the end of our evaluation of high school level programs, we equipped every high school with computer labs. Indeed, to improve students' language skills, they need access to more than just professors who speak well.

Twenty-five years ago, when I started to teach, the teacher's quality was at the heart of everything. If they spoke badly, we were out of luck, there was nothing else. Now, there is access to technology. It is the children who should speak, and not the teacher. It is the children who should ask, speak, communicate, access resources. It is technology that has allowed us to reach this point.

On that topic, we are launching a partnership with a region in France. In a few of our classrooms, our students will use technology to conduct study projects together. As Calina emphasized earlier, if some teachers' language skills are not perfect, we can develop those skills through other means.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Mr. Dionne Labelle, you have the floor.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Congratulations to all of you for your involvement and for the values that you defend.

This is our first meeting on this theme. Obviously, it will help us to form an opinion on what we wish to study, which could be quite far-ranging.

I listened attentively to your presentations. A few times, you spoke of the requirement for funds. At the same time, I was looking at the funds that are currently invested by the federal government to support both official languages in Canada.

Recently, this committee welcomed representatives from Statistics Canada, who came and gave us a rather gloomy picture of bilingualism, particularly among youth. I will therefore approach the topic in a general way.

In Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario, bilingualism is doing well enough. As for the rest of Canada, it has been observed that as soon as young people leave school, they either become part of the labour force, or they go to a school where there is no immersion program. They define themselves less and less as bilingual people.

Consequently, there are two situations existing in parallel: we have never invested so much into second languages, but there have never been so few young people who define themselves as being bilingual. Therefore, there is a problem with this machine. The dream of a bilingual Canadian nation is struggling somewhat. We will attempt to understand why. How can immersion schools play a role in the situation?

Moreover, is there something else hiding behind this? Indeed, it seems to me that the field of education is really quite stable. I looked at the number of people who took second language classes in the 1970s and concluded there have been giant steps taken since then. The number of people enrolled in immersion has also grown by leaps and bounds. And yet, bilingualism is stagnating, or even receding.

Could you give me your analysis of the situation?

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

That is part of the reason why we evaluated our school board programs: we were asking ourselves what we were producing. I think that is the question that you are asking as well. What are we producing as a country? That is exactly why a national vision of what it means to be competent in both languages must be established.

To have a national vision, it would be necessary to set agreed-upon levels of competence and to have tools to measure them. So, we could talk about that. Not only would that give us a common language, it would give the students a vision, which would be very significant.

I remember that when I put forward the idea of having an evaluation at the end of the 12th grade, one of the counsellors told me that it would not be possible. This person believed that it would not be possible to motivate the kids to study French by telling them that there would be an evaluation at the end of their student career, because kids hate evaluations. The counsellor and I laughed a bit about that. However, it was not simply a matter of performing an evaluation. In reality, it showed us what we were missing in our programs: communication and interaction.

Previously, our students were capable of giving an oral presentation as long as they could take notes and read them. However, Mr. Dion now refuses to let students read their notes. They must be able to express themselves freely.

The first year that we started performing these evaluations, students told us that the part that was the hardest for them was when they were asked questions for which they had no opportunity to prepare. Consequently, we are changing the way we do things in our classrooms. We are encouraging the kids to talk amongst themselves, as well as to contact francophones throughout the world. We also encourage them to listen to programs from Africa and francophone countries.

That is why I say that it is important.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Morrow, do you want to add something?

[Justin Morrow]

I think Calina has something to add.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Ms. Ellwand, you have the floor.

[Calina Ellwand]

I would like to say that bilingualism is not something that ends after high school.

It's lifelong work. It's something you have to continue to work at throughout your entire life. Reaching the end of high school and receiving that certificate of bilingualism is great and receiving a certain grade is great, but if you don't have opportunities beyond high school to keep honing and using your French, and seeing the value of having that French, then you lose it and the certificate means nothing and the grade means nothing. You're not going to have access to the kinds of economic benefits such as employment opportunities, which we talk about as being one of the reasons that people should maintain their French or stay in French immersion.

That being said, as Jennifer was saying, there need to be more reasons given to students and adults to keep up with their French, opportunities to interact within Canada with other French communities or—

I think my time is being cut off. No?

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I apologize, Ms. Ellwand, but I must interrupt you.

In his presentation, Mr. Morrow said that we have to get French outside of the classroom. I would like to hear your view on that. What does it mean to take French outside of the classroom?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Dionne Labelle.

Monsieur Morrow et Madame Ellwand, do you want to respond to that?

[Justin Morrow]

What does it mean to get French outside of the classroom? It's to get people using French in their jobs and in their careers, and in their clubs, or on the streets, or making it more visible. It's about allowing or enabling young people who get out of immersion schools or core French schools to have the confidence to speak in French and to proudly say that they speak French. It's great. I think Mr. Trottier mentioned it too, but extracurricular activities are very important and they play a big role in getting us to be more bilingual.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Gourde.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.

My first question is for Ms. Adams.

As parents, we often wonder if it is better for our children to start core second language classes early, like the ones you offer in French, for example, or if it is better to start a little later, say in grade 4, with either core or immersion programs.

In Quebec, there is currently a big debate on that issue. Should young people start learning English in kindergarten, or should they wait until later, until grade 6?

In your view, what is more beneficial for the children?

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

That is a big question that we often ask ourselves.

We conducted a major study to see what research said about that. As for entering immersion programs, the study showed that at the end of these early programs, oral results were normally somewhat higher than results in other programs. However with writing, we noted that immersion courses starting later yielded the same results.

Demographically speaking, we also discovered differences between children registered in early immersion and those registered in late immersion. For children entering early immersion, we noted more varied demographics, a more equal number of boys and girls, more socio-economic equality, and so on. With the late immersion programs, however, we noted that many more girls than boys participated.

As regards the number of children who went on to obtain a French-language diploma, we saw very little difference between children who completed the intermediary program and those who completed the early immersion program. The question is this: do the same type of students take the two programs? I think that the early immersion program contingent is somewhat more varied than the intermediate immersion program one.

We also discovered that many parents of children who participate in our programs are English-language learners, in other words, people who are learning English. We asked these parents what they prefer. We discovered that many parents who speak a language other than French and English at home prefer to register their children in the intermediate program, in order to give those children an opportunity to acquire a good grounding in English up until grade 3.

That is one of the reasons why our school board decided to create two points of entry. We wanted to give parents the choice. Some anglophone parents prefer that their children learn to read in English first, so that they have a very strong base. So parents are completely free to choose.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Would you say that parents who decide to send their children to early immersion already speak both official languages, but with perhaps a weaker level of French?

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

No. In most cases, parents who register their children in our immersion programs do not speak French. Sometimes, they speak a bit of French at work, but most of them are anglophones or allophones.

I must point out that we have two other school boards here in Ottawa, for francophones.

Certainly there are some francophone parents, but most children are children of anglophones or people who speak neither English nor French at home.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

So good core programs that start early, at age 5 or 6, and that continue year after year, enable children to achieve a highly satisfactory level by grade 11.

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

Yes. We found that children who were assessed normally obtained a B2 level, which means they are quite competent.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Clearly, some students have more aptitude than others.

Having said that, tell me if I am on the right track; I think that the amount of time children are exposed to French is a factor, be it in the company of a teacher or through follow-up provided by parents. In addition, today's technology makes it possible to increase the amount of exposure to French. Overall, being exposed to another language for 1,200 hours makes it possible to achieve very interesting results.

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

Of course we should be able to produce a rather high skill level among our students. Unfortunately, to date, the only thing that was counted in immersion programs was the number of credits earned. I do not know if it works the same way in other provinces, but the number of credits does not mean anything in terms of the linguistic competency that we produce in our students, at the end of the day. That is what the programs lack.

For example, for children in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12, we knew how many credits had been earned in geography. We knew that if a student had 10 credits, he obtained an immersion certificate in Ontario. However, that says nothing about the students linguistic competency.

That is the other measure we are proposing. We should have a national conversation for that.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

At the end of the day, is it better to start at age 5 or 6 or at age 12?

[Dr. Jennifer Adams]

I believe that it is very beneficial to start young regardless of the area, not just for immersion programs.

We have surveyed parents, both parents of children in immersion and parents of children in core programming in Ottawa. The findings indicated that it was very important for children to begin in preschool.

Our school board therefore decided that here it would start at age 4 for both streams.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Benskin.