Good morning, everyone.
I am very happy to be here today. I could tell you about my personal background, but I would rather talk to you about the Manitoba context and the work I do at Manitoba Education and Training.
I learned French through core French classes, as others here have done. I was a French teacher in a program in English and a teacher in a French immersion program. I was also a divisional consultant in a school division for the French component as well as for other languages, including English as a second language, Spanish and German.
I will speak to you in both official languages, because I think we need spaces where it is possible to communicate in both languages. So I will take the liberty of speaking in both French and English.
My current position, which I've held for 11 years, is that of liaison officer for French as a second language. It involves understanding and addressing challenges in French as a second language in Manitoba and supporting school divisions and other partners in improving the state of French as a second language in our province.
I'm dedicated to this because I have a personal experience, and I see it in our children every day. What resonates with me here is that for so many people it's about the journey. It's almost a miracle that some of our kids stay till the end of grade 12 and maybe continue on in their studies, because what I hear from many people is that our students don't necessarily have a legitimate place in Canadian society as bilinguals or plurilinguals. That may not be very comfortable for you to hear, but that's the reality.
Some of the biggest challenges we face are with confidence—confidence in language competencies—and that goes for our students as well as our teachers.
I'd like to speak about French in the English program and also about French immersion. In terms of French in the English program in Manitoba, all of our school divisions offer these courses from K to 12. It's not mandated provincially; however, most school divisions mandate it.
Most teachers are generalists. They may or may not have a certain competency in French. There's little or no training for them when they go through the faculty of education. This is a huge concern. Provincially, we offer much professional development and much learning, but these teachers don't necessarily see themselves as language teachers. They teach all the subjects every day, from K to 8. Perhaps the high school teachers are specialists; I was, but most teachers aren't.
What happens, then, is that students have limited exposure from K to 8, and what they do have isn't great. After five, six, or seven years of French in French class, most students leave with almost no competency in communicative skills in French. What does that result in? It results in huge reductions in enrolment in the high schools. We have such small numbers of high school students who actually continue to grade 12 that it's shocking.
When I was in school way back when, many students continued on in grade 12. Some of us here around this table are those students. That is less prevalent in society now, and that concerns me greatly, because the big thing we think we need to pay attention to is that most of our students in Manitoba will only have access to French language education through that format. They account for 31% of our Manitoba students that are in the program, whereas French immersion, which I will speak to next, accounts for 13% of our population.
Coming now to French immersion, I think similar things are also true. We sell the story and we sell the dream, but do we actually realize that dream in a real way?