Thank you, Chair.
Good afternoon. On behalf of our director Tony Pontes, and the chair of our board Janet McDougald, we are pleased to accept your invitation to appear before the House Standing Committee on Official Languages.
In the Peel District School Board, we have three very successful French as a second language programs. We have French immersion, abbreviated as FI, which begins in grade 1. We have extended French beginning in grade 7, and core French beginning in grade 4.
As the invitation we received asked us to address French immersion “access, capacity, waiting lists, best practices, and efficiencies”, we will confine our remarks to those aspects of our FI program.
The demand for an FI program has grown at a very rapid pace in our board over the last 10 years. In 2001, 9.4% of all grade 1 students were in FI. By 2011, this percentage increased to approximately 25%. This growth demonstrates our board's commitment to the belief that FI is an option for all students, and the principle that “Participation in FSL programs should reflect the diversity of the student population, including students with special education needs and English language learners.” That's from the ministry document entitled “A Framework for French as a Second Language in Ontario Schools, Kindergarten to Grade 12”, on page 10.
However, the rapid growth of the FI program has caused some stakeholders to express concern about the board's ability to sustain a quality FI program for students. To address this concern about the sustainability of a quality FI program, the Peel District School Board conducted an extensive review in 2011-12 of its elementary FI program.
This review was conducted by a committee and had several components, including an extensive review of the literature. Also, FI parent input was sought through a survey, to which 4,342 families responded. They were asked the following questions: Why did you enrol your child in French immersion? If busing were not provided for French immersion, would you have registered your child in the program? For those parents where French immersion is offered at your home school, would you have registered your child in the program if it had been offered at another school? The survey also asked whether they were planning on having their child continue French immersion in secondary school, and finally we asked if there were any other comments that they would like to share.
Other stakeholders, such as board departments, were asked to provide information as issues emerged. For example, our board is experiencing tremendous enrolment pressures in some areas, and this pressure has impacted space for potential FI programs.
The key finding that emerged from the review was the difficulty in ensuring a quality FI teacher. The review committee defined quality as a teacher who is qualified, fluent, and committed. The review committee found that although principals were finding it very difficult to hire teachers who are qualified to teach French immersion, qualifications alone were not enough to ensure a quality program.
The review committee heard repeatedly from different stakeholders regarding instances where a teacher had the requisite paper qualifications but was not fluent in French. Furthermore, the review committee heard that qualified and fluent teachers sometimes chose to leave the French immersion program to teach in the English program. The review committee heard that although it is very difficult for principals to find French immersion teachers for permanent contract teaching assignments, it is even more problematic for them to find FI teachers for long-term occasional assignments.
Although the Ontario College of Teachers has stated that there is not a shortage of FI teachers, this has not been our experience in Peel.
Early in the 2012-13 school year, the review committee shared its findings and recommendations with the board of trustees. The board of trustees considered the report and recommendations and enacted some changes to the French immersion program. These changes will be revisited by 2017.
First, the grade 1 French immersion program will be capped at the September 2012 level of enrolment, which is roughly 25%. Second, if registrations for FI exceed capacity at a school, then a lottery process would be used. Third, some students would be exempt from a lottery process should it occur.
At this time we would like to share our process for accessing grade 1 French immersion. First, and most importantly, information is provided to parents so that they can make an informed decision about their children's participation in French immersion. Information evenings are held in every French immersion school and at central locations. The board provides informational material in a variety of formats and languages. The board has worked in partnership with Canadian Parents for French to produce two informational videos for parents.
The second major aspect of our process for accessing grade 1 French immersion is that the registration deadline is set well in advance, and this deadline is communicated to parents in a variety of formats and languages.
The next step is that if there are more registered students than there are people spaces at the school, then a lottery is conducted. However, for the 2013-14 school year, only 4 of our 34 grade 1 french immersion schools used a lottery. Therefore, 97.5% of registrants were placed without a lottery.
Lastly, we keep students on wait lists. We continue to monitor them until the end of their first week of school in September. At this time, students on the wait list who cannot be accommodated at their home French immersion school are offered a place in the nearest French immersion school that has space. By the end of our registration process, all families who registered for grade 1 French immersion were offered a place in French immersion either in their home French immersion school or the nearest French immersion school that had space.
We feel that our registration process has been a success. We have ensured a quality program, but we've also been able to offer a place for all who registered for grade 1 French immersion. We are proud of our French immersion program, our students and our staff, and we value all forms of diversity, including linguistic diversity, and we are pleased to provide students with an opportunity to learn, for many, their third language.
Thank you, Chair.