As New Brunswick prepares to implement sweeping changes in classrooms across the province next year, concern is setting in among parents.
“It completely takes the choice away from the parents,” said Joe Pascon, whose son is in French immersion and his daughter will be entering into the new framework as a Grade 1 student next year.
Calling it an Innovative Immersion Program for all students entering kindergarten and Grade 1, kids will now spend 50 per cent of their day engaged in exploratory learning in French and the other half being taught in English.
“My son, he started in French immersion in Grade 1,” said Pascon. “He’s doing well and we really wanted our daughter to do this and now it’s going to be a completely different experience for her, and by the sounds of it, they have like four classes a day and half of them are going to be in French, so you’re just adding one extra French class is all your doing.”
The government said they’ve spent two years coming up with the this new framework.
“It wasn’t just pulled out of thin air,” said Education and Early Childhood Development Minister Bill Hogan. “We did have a model at one point that ran for about 10 years in Bathurst that had extremely successful results, that actually out-performed what we see today in our early immersion results.”
Adding, “I’ve heard a lot of positive feedback that parents will no longer have to make the choice of whether or not their children will go into a Grade 1 French Immersion program when they’re not sure whether or not they’re going to be successful.”
He says this is a huge challenge for parents and children in the province, but this program will address the needs of all the students in every grade.
But for parents we spoke with, it still feels like it’s being forced.
“It seems like the government is not actually listening to the people, they’re just trying to force this on our children,” said Pascon.
“It just seems like it’s more of a money saving program and not going to help anybody out because they just want full classrooms,” he added. “That’s what they keep repeating in a lot of their information charts.”
For his family, it means a big divide between their daughter’s education in the new framework model and their son, who is happy and thriving in French immersion already.
Since the announcement Thursday, many New Brunswickers have taken to social media with comments ranging from optimism about the new program to anger.
“With any pilot, the reality is that we’re using children as an experiment,” said Christina Robichaud, who has two daughters currently in French immersion.
She says her younger daughter already isn’t getting the French education they were expecting at a pilot program school in Moncton. Adding that if she had children entering school next year, she would fight to get them into the Francophone district instead of the Anglophone one.
“We’re talking with Anglophone district, solidly and solely, but we still also have our Francophone district, so what we’re doing is chipping away and dismantling our Anglophone school system so Francophone students are now at a much greater advantage,” she said.
The government says the goal is to have all students graduate with a conversational level of French.
“If we set our bar low, where do we go from there, as far as opportunity for them,” asked Robichaud.
Public consultations are taking place through the end of January, both through an online survey and in-person.
“We’re going to have people on both sides that have some concerns, I recognize that, and I understand as a parent myself how difficult that is,” said Hogan.
However, he says the framework will be moving forward and how it will look day-to-day is what’s still up for discussion.
