Official Languages committee  Absolutely.

Official Languages committee  I believe that Mr. Morrow and Ms. Ellwand are better able to answer your questions, because they see opportunities in all of these activities.

Official Languages committee  I want to be very careful with the concept of a test because what I'm really recommending to the committee is not the actual adoption of a test but the adoption of a framework for proficiency levels. Whether or not a test takes place, it is very important that that stays at the d

Official Languages committee  That is a big question. Even if I was the director general of the French-language school board, I would have the same challenge. The different managers talk about this. Obviously, it is very difficult to motivate the children to continue speaking French outside the classroom. In

Official Languages committee  In our school board, if they already had some French, I would certainly have suggested immersion.

Official Languages committee  In my opinion, it is important. It encourages children and adults to continue with language learning. It is certainly useful. Under the agreement reached between the federal government and the province of Ontario, when we receive funding, certain amounts are earmarked especially

Official Languages committee  It's very new. We are the first English school district in Ontario to pilot that. It is used in some locations in Alberta, as well as in B.C., and in the Atlantic provinces as well. Those provinces are quite connected to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages,

Official Languages committee  I'm conscious of the fact that you're into a federal jurisdiction and a provincial jurisdiction. We've talked a little bit about the kinds of things.... Getting better instruction is really what's going to make a difference. We have 72,000 students. I love what Calina is saying a

Official Languages committee  Yes. We found that children who were assessed normally obtained a B2 level, which means they are quite competent.

Official Languages committee  Of course we should be able to produce a rather high skill level among our students. Unfortunately, to date, the only thing that was counted in immersion programs was the number of credits earned. I do not know if it works the same way in other provinces, but the number of credit

Official Languages committee  I believe that it is very beneficial to start young regardless of the area, not just for immersion programs. We have surveyed parents, both parents of children in immersion and parents of children in core programming in Ottawa. The findings indicated that it was very important f

Official Languages committee  That is a big question that we often ask ourselves. We conducted a major study to see what research said about that. As for entering immersion programs, the study showed that at the end of these early programs, oral results were normally somewhat higher than results in other pro

Official Languages committee  No. In most cases, parents who register their children in our immersion programs do not speak French. Sometimes, they speak a bit of French at work, but most of them are anglophones or allophones. I must point out that we have two other school boards here in Ottawa, for francoph

Official Languages committee  That is part of the reason why we evaluated our school board programs: we were asking ourselves what we were producing. I think that is the question that you are asking as well. What are we producing as a country? That is exactly why a national vision of what it means to be compe

Official Languages committee  At the school board level, we definitely saw the importance of extracurricular activities for parents, and for children in particular. This year has been a very good example. Naturally, it is very important. We are lucky to have a great deal of staff available to support these a