It's an honour and a privilege to be here today. Edmonton Public Schools has a long history of supporting second language programs for our students, our parents, and our teachers.
With Edmonton Public Schools, I work at the Institute for Innovation in Second Language Education, more affectionately called IISLE. I left some brochures with Christine and she's going to let you know what can happen with them. The brochures tell you about the services we provide for all the students in Edmonton Public Schools who are in the French immersion program.
Our language education history of French immersion began in 1974. Just to give you a little context, we currently have 17 French immersion schools in Edmonton Public Schools, which go from kindergarten through to grade 12, and we have 4,027 students in our program. At the kindergarten level, we have 458 students enrolled this year; and in grade 1, we have 455 students. We have policies and regulations about teaching and learning French immersion in a French immersion program.
For kindergarten and grade 1, 100% of the program is in French, until January of grade 2, when English language arts are introduced. Other than that, all subjects are taught in French by our teachers. The students who come to Edmonton Public Schools in kindergarten and grade 1, because that's when they can start, have had virtually no previous experience with the language. They come from homes where just English is spoken; they come from homes where French may be spoken a bit of the time; and more and more, many of our students are coming from allophone homes where neither French nor English is spoken.
I've also shared with Christine a quality second language programming tool that we have created for our teachers and our schools. It was written for administrators, parents, and teachers, to be a reflective tool on how they can examine and discuss different aspects of French immersion programming.
Edmonton Public Schools is very committed to inclusion, and by “inclusion” I mean that, for those 458 students who are beginning in kindergarten this year, we want to see all the students there 13 years from now when they graduate from grade 12. There has been a history in the past, and it's not personally one of our Edmonton Public Schools, of counselling students out of the program when they encounter difficulty. All our students are diverse learners, and we need to find the best practices and resources to support them in their learning.
We are working very hard at providing effective educational practices for kindergarten and grade 1 students, and we are going about adapting a lot of the resources that we use to a French immersion context. Some of those include practices such as guided reading and guided math, offering that in French, and literacy and math interventions.
Among the challenge we face in early childhood is the persistent myth that French is only for certain students. We, too, lack a number of paraprofessionals who speak French and who can support students at the early age. There's also a lack of age- and language-appropriate resources. We also find that there's a high cost and long travel times for French immersion students on the school bus as they get to the different schools in our board. As well, there is a lack of preschool places in French. A lot of our schools would like to offer French preschool, but they can't.
In terms of access in early childhood, one of the things we would like to see is access to bilingual reading specialists, psychologists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists so that they may work in French with our young students. We would also like to have some access to educational assistants who speak French. It currently is rare to find an educational assistant in a school who can speak French. Librarians would be very important for us to see in French, and access to quality resources that are age-appropriate for French immersion students. By that I mean resources that are language-appropriate but also not considered too babyish for them.
We would like access to low-cost, timely, reliable transportation to our French immersion schools. As I said, it would be great to have more preschools where our students can begin to learn the language at an even younger age.
In support for us, we would like to see more research on best practices for teaching our early learners in French immersion; funding and opportunities for educators, in addition to teachers, and paraprofessionals to learn French; more advocating at the provincial level for adequate funding for French immersion programs, including transportation; and certainly the continuation of the official languages in education program.
Thank you for your time.