I think immersion schools are doing well. Your suggestions might help improve things. However, I am not sure that the overall learning of French is going well. That is what I am worried about.
According to the data before me, there are 181,000 students in the Manitoban public system. The number is going up. There are about 5,000 students in the francophone division. That number is also going up. There are about 21,000 students in immersion schools. That number is going up. That’s good.
But here is the bad news. The learning of French in regular English-speaking schools—I think we are talking about 61,000 students—has dropped significantly. In 1990, there were 90,000 students. This means that the number has dropped by one-third. The situation is similar in the private sector. So approximately 94,000 English-speaking students have virtually no opportunity to learn French in Manitoba.
How do you explain that? Immersion schools are in a sense the façade that hides a drop in numbers. This drop is of great concern to me.