FREDERICTON - New Brunswick is scrapping early French immersion in its anglophone school system, a move that drew almost immediate condemnation Friday from a number of groups in Canada's only officially bilingual province.
The province's Liberal government has decided to introduce students to French with an intensive program in Grade 5, and then give them the choice to enter immersion in Grade 6.
"This is not the way to go... you need to add resources,'' Madeleine Dube, the Conservative education critic, said in the legislature.
She said the government was making a mistake and should instead be improving early immersion.
Walter Lee, the New Brunswick president of Canadian Parents for French, said the government was ignoring the experts in favour of a plan designed by politicians.
"It may be a victory for the minister of education, but the real losers in this are the children in the province of New Brunswick that will have no French language instruction until Grade 5,'' Lee said.
The changes follow a controversial report that concluded 91 per cent of the roughly 1,500 New Brunswick children who started early immersion in 1995 dropped out of the program by the time they reached high school.
Education Minister Kelly Lamrock said it's been shown that New Brunswick students who begin second-language training later achieve better results.
Doug Willms, director of the Canadian Institute for Social Policy at the University of New Brunswick, said that although "earlier is better'' is often the rule for education, it hasn't worked that way for French second-language instruction in the province.
"When they have a good strong base in their first language, reading and math skills, and then you introduce that second language, they will make much better progress,'' he said.
The Liberal government wants 70 per cent of students to be bilingual by 2012. As of 2006, less than one per cent of graduating students were proficient in speaking French.
The French programs will continue through to Grade 12.
"All children will have quality French language training experiences for seven years in New Brunswick,'' Lamrock said.
As well, principals will be required to have activities in their schools to encourage the use of conversational French.
"There will be a bilingual schools policy that will require all middle and high schools to provide for learning experiences in French outside the classroom to supplement what is learned inside the classroom,'' the minister said.
Education time that had been allocated for French in Grades 1 through 4 will be used for art, music and physical education. Any students currently enrolled in early immersion will be allowed to continue.
Graham Fraser, Canada's commissioner of official languages, said in a release from Ottawa that he was disappointed the New Brunswick government had removed one of the options for young people to learn their other official language.
However, Fraser said he was pleased the government decided to maintain the target of 70 per cent of students being functionally bilingual by the time they graduate high school.
