QUEBEC CITY – Quebec’s Education Minister Marie Malavoy announced Thursday that she is scrapping a Liberal plan for universal English immersion across the province’s French schools by 2015-2016.
But the minister confirmed in a Quebec City news conference that existing immersion programs for grade 6 students, now available to about 12 per cent of French students, may go ahead and individual schools can set up new immersion programs.
Fact file: Quebec’s education system explained
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Malavoy said the goal of her Parti Québécois government is to ensure that French students “can speak English and be understood” by the end of high school. But her first goal is that they master the French language first.
Malavoy expressed reservations in the past about the teaching of English starting in grade 1 in French schools, saying it meant introducing a “foreign language” before students had mastered their mother tongue.
She has commissioned the École nationale de l’administration public to look into whether English immersion in grade 6 is a good idea and will also ask ENAP to evaluate whether teaching English from grade 1 is a problem.
Her announcement comes on the heels of a report to the Parti Québécois government released by the Conseil supérieur de la langue française on Wednesday. Earlier in the year, the English Montreal School Board launched a campaign to attact Francohone families who wanted a bilingual education for their children.
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