Thank you.
Mr. Chair and Mr. Vice-Chair, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Tamie Beattie, and I am the French program coordinator at the Edmonton Public School Board.
I am going to continue in English.
I am one of many who work at the Institution for Innovation in Second Language Education, which I will refer to as IISLE. IISLE is situated at the Languages Centre at Woodcroft, which houses five language resource centres. We have regional, provincial, national, and international partnerships, and international credentialling in four languages, and we support the teaching and learning of 11 different languages.
We believe that we are the only school district in Alberta that has a second language mandate from grades 4 to 9 that is governed by a policy, as well as regulations and guidelines around language of instruction, hours of instruction, inclusion of all students, targeted teacher language proficiency, and more.
Of the 100,000 students with Edmonton public schools, 52,000 study a second language in 2018.
French immersion has two entry points: a kindergarten or grade 1 start, as well as grade 7 late French immersion. French as a second language has a grade 4 start, which is division 2, with 10 schools having a division 1 start, which starts at grade 1. We use locally developed courses as a program of study to teach the courses. Some high schools also offer a grade 10 start for students learning French as a second language for the first time.
Over 800 French immersion and French as a second language teachers currently are employed by Edmonton Public Schools. We have 4,027 students in our late French immersion program, as well as 34,934 students in French as a second language.
Students in both French programs achieve high language proficiency levels as measured by the Diplôme d'études en langue française, or DELF, which is an international exam. Upon completion of their programs in grade 12, FSL students will attain a B1 level, and most French immersion students will attain a B2 level.
Currently, French immersion is our most popular program. As such, we are opening two more elementary school sites next year, in the fall of 2018. Alberta, like other western provinces, has no second language mandate, thus the ability for Albertan students to access quality French language programs is limited. Without infrastructure, few in the province have access to FSL and, most especially, to French immersion. Edmonton Public Schools is an anomaly.
The following are some of our barriers and suggestions.
We receive funding from the official languages program. We need this OLEP funding, and we urge you to continue with this funding so that we can support our French programs. Without it, French programming in our district would be at risk, especially in terms of all the different opportunities that we are able to offer our students because of this funding.
Edmonton Public Schools would also like more provincial programs of study with various entry points for French as a second language, such as a kindergarten or grade 1 start and a grade 7 entry point, like the other languages. This would make it easier to meet the demand from parents and to accommodate students in junior high who have not studied French as a second language while in elementary school. This especially would help us better serve immigrants and English as a second language students who currently make up a quarter of our student population.
Transitions continue to be an issue. We only have two entry points in FSL. As mentioned, it would help if we had a program of studies in FSL and French immersion aligned with the common European framework of reference for languages, the CEFR, to better place students in programs suited to their level of proficiency in the kindergarten to grade 12 and post-secondary system. We have used OLEP funding to offer self-exams, especially to our grade 12 students, and these results are recognized at some provincial, national, and international post-secondary institutions.
Edmonton Public Schools believes it is a fundamental right of all Canadians to receive instruction in both official languages. The federal government could help by influencing funding and teacher training to ensure that all students, including new Canadians, can choose to learn both official languages.
Edmonton Public Schools works closely with CASLT, the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers, at a national level, and the Second Languages and Intercultural Council of the Alberta Teachers' Association at the provincial level, to access current research around second language teaching and learning.
We use its recently published “Literature Review on the Impact of Second-Language Learning” to inform schools, students, parents, and other educational stakeholders on the positive impact of learning a second language for all students. The federal government could play a role by influencing research and by helping to promote the results of that research.
The Edmonton Public School Board also has a philosophy of inclusion: all students have a right to instruction in both official languages. A barrier to achieving this goal across the province and beyond is the persistent belief that only the most academic of students can learn a second language. The federal government should influence and share research, play a strong advocacy role, and lobby provinces to institute a second language requirement with multiple access points to ensure that students can access their right to learn both official languages.
As for the Official Languages Act, it should continue to be revised to move to include the rights of all Canadian students to learn both official languages in the kindergarten to grade 12 educational system, and to not only protect minority language rights, which must remain enshrined in the act.
Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to voice our concerns as well as our triumphs as a school board.