I wasn’t going to mention it myself
but then in reference to the recent report on French immersion, Jeannot Volpé is quoted in the T-J as having
blasted the government for repeating the same mistakes it made with the Commission on Post-Secondary Education report, which was handed over to a working group comprised of university presidents and college principals last October after its recommendations sparked controversy across the province.
“They brought in a group that would tell them what they want to hear, and then they realized that they couldn’t sell it,” Volpé said.
The recommendations of the FSL report are flawed and contradict numerous studies by experts in the field, he added, noting the situation underscores that the government has “no plan.”
“They’re just postponing everything. They’re just creating more commissions, more reports, more studies,” he said.
Let’s hope the schools don’t have to wait as long as we — well, heck! We’re still waiting.
Message to the school system: sit down and take a load off. This might take awhile.
Based on my experience of being a francophically challenged supply teacher in different FSL classes, I will say that early immersion students have better attitudes and perform better in French than late immersion and Core French students.
I problem I see with the FSL report is that it is really a financial report disguised as an FSL evaluation report. It would be great to have all the English-speaking students in early French Immersion classes. Unfortunately, there are not enough qualified FSL teachers to teach in those classes. The real problem is not the early French Immersion students, but the Core French students who either drop French in high school or complete grade 12 French but still can’t perform functionally and independently in French. It’s a waste of money to fund Core French classes knowing that 98-99 percent of its students will not succeed in functional French by the time they complete grade 12.
I think what the NB government wants to do is cancel early immersion French, transfer those teachers to teach intensive French to students in grades five or six in half or full-day French classes for one year. Those students will enter grade seven with a better understanding and appreciation of French. Will French Immersion suffer? Yes, it will. I think the government thinking is that a little bit of suffering in French Immersion will be replaced by double the advantages in Core French. Remember, the report on FSL is a financial report disguised in edu-babble.
Re-reading this post I see I was dead-wrong. I bet the school system wishes the govt. _had_ taken longer.