Orphaning a programme: a “how-to” list

Stephanie McCarty recently had the following letter published in the T-J:

A central tenet of Minister Lamrock’s embattled plan for French language instruction in our province is that children currently in the early French immersion program will be “grandfathered.” Recent events suggest that it will be more like “orphaned.”

Children in Grade 1 should expect to have 11 more years of their program; yet District 2’s website has expunged any mention of the program.

As a hint of worse to come, District 18 has removed all remedial help for EFI students, and similar programs are being cut in District 8.

Studies over the past decade have argued that the proper way of reducing streaming out of EFI is to provide it with better support, as is done today in Nova Scotia.

However, when Lamrock apportioned funds from the joint commission on classroom composition last year, more than $1 million were provided for special help in the core program, and only $4,000 for EFI students. No wonder parents of struggling students are encouraged to migrate to the core program.

It seems that if Lamrock is allowed to continue down this uncharted path, he will do even more to ensure that EFI becomes the “elitist” program he has criticized.

To this we can add

• The Dept. of Education is putting Gr. 1 EFI materials up for sale. Apparently Nova Scotia, being infinitely more enlightened, is interested in buying them.
• District 2: no new resources will be bought for EFI.
• District 6: there will be two French supervisors starting next year, one for IF and the other for LFI. EFI will be handled between them.
• Last year the CPF Sussex Chapter received 3 grants from the provincial Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour to hire bilingual counsellors for their Summer French Immersion day camp for EFI students. There are to be no provincial SEED grants to hire summer students this year.
• District 10: in previous years District 10 gave the CPF St. George Chapter a grant to help them with their Summer French Immersion day camp for EFI students in elementary school. This year the grant is “no longer available.”
• Also on the block: summer reading programmes and literacy support offered by young B. Ed student tutors.

Feel free to add to the list in the comments. But don’t crash my server.

Okay here’s

a quick question: if in the last two years over 70% of enrollments in French immersion were in early French immersion, how on earth does Kelly Lamrock think only offering late immersion is going to get more students learning French? Does he expect that whole 70+% to take late immersion? Anyone with an adolescent can tell him it is a lot easier to convince a six-year of something, than an eleven-year old.