Education Early French program segregated children according to social class, says researcher

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Doug Wilms

OTTAWA - New Brunswick's early French immersion program in effect segregated children according to their family's social class, creating a gulf as great as that between white and black Americans, an education researcher has written in an influential public policy journal.

The researcher - Doug Willms of the University of New Brunswick's Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy - will be sharing his critique of Education Minister Kelly Lamrock's reforms to French second-language education today at a closed-door consultation the minister and an estimated 100 stakeholders will attend.

Willms will use the occasion to pitch his own proposal for French-language teaching, which he says goes further than Lamrock's and also addresses its shortcomings.

Willms said Wednesday he has five criticisms of Lamrock's plan:

* it has not observed the dictum that "early is better" when introducing students to a second language;

* it doesn't solve the problem of students leaving French immersion in droves after Grade 10;

* it still leaves external assessments of language proficiency until Grade 12, while earlier assessments could motivate students and reassure parents;

* it doesn't explicitly outline what special needs students will be offered in the Grade 5 intensive French program;

* it does not offer a clear route to advanced levels of proficiency, which would respond to the ambitions of those families who value bilingualism and whose children are strong academically.

Willms proposes a universal program that has a "light core" French element in kindergarten and Grade 1, followed by a more intensive core program in grades 2, 3 and 4, followed by the same intensive program Lamrock has planned for Grade 5.

This would provide the early exposure to a second language that many argue is best, Willms said.

Then, rather than late French immersion, Willms would have no streaming in grades 6, 7 and 8, with the latter grade featuring a five-month "blast" of intensive French.

"When you reach the end of Grade 8, a lot of your students would have already reached the intermediate level," he said.

In high school, there would be two programs. One would be a clear route to an advanced-level credential, open to students who achieve their intermediate qualification at the end of Grade 8.

The other program would continue from grades 9 to 12, but would not be streamed, because it would allow students to take some advanced courses once they attain their intermediate level, perhaps in grades 9 or 10.

"It would be more fluid," he said. "It wouldn't be 'you're one of the immersion kids and you're not.'"

Willms' research found the province's early immersion classrooms have more children from wealthier and better-educated families and fewer children with special needs than the children enrolled in core English classes.

The immersion classes also have children who posted far higher scores in school-readiness tests.

Most of the concern expressed about so-called "streaming" due to early French immersion has focused on how the program left more special needs students in the core English program, despite early immersion having no formal admission requirements.

But Willms' findings, just published in the summer issue of Policy Options, show that streaming has been both deeper and broader than the debate over early immersion has acknowledged.

New Brunswick has been embroiled in a controversy about how best to teach French as a second language since Lamrock announced in mid-March that he would be scrapping early immersion, which had a Grade 1 entry point, in favour of a universal intensive French program starting in Grade 5.

"If in New Brunswick, the parents who have low levels of education or who have low-status occupations such as labourers or basic service industries - if those parents were visible minorities, and the parents who are in the top three social classes were white, we wouldn't even be having this conversation," says Willms in his article.

"The extent of segregation due associated with French immersion would be so obvious that anyone with a sense of social justice would say, 'this is just not fair.'"‚"

Willms divided parents of grade-school children into five equal-sized groups based on incomes, education and occupation, using Statistics Canada data for postal code subdivisions, not individuals.

He found parents from the highest socioeconomic group are nearly twice as likely as average New Brunswickers to enrol their children in early immersion and parents from the lowest group were half as likely.

Comparing the socioeconomic status of the early French immersion families to those in core English exposes a "divide comparable to or larger than the divide between non-Hispanic whites and African-Americans in the U.S.," says his article.

Willms also found some segregation according to ability. Data from evaluations done by teachers for children aged four to six found that early French immersion students had significantly higher scores across five areas: general knowledge, social skills and behaviour, cognitive skills, language and physical development.

The differences in class composition left all students in core English programs at a disadvantage, Willms argues.

"School choice is not a right when it has a negative effect on the educational choice of other children, especially those who are most vulnerable.

"And this is the perverse effect that early French immersion is having in New Brunswick."