Organizations call for New Brunswick to reconsider scrapping French immersion program

Some groups are asking New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs to reconsider his goal to scrap the province’s French immersion program in the fall of 2023.

Higgs and new education minister Bill Hogan say the educational model will be replaced with a new program for all incoming students that focuses on ensuring a basic level of conversational French.

That’s a mistake according to Chantal Bourbonnais, executive director of the Canadian Association of Immersion Professionals.

“It’s not going to help bilingualism, that’s just going to go down,” she said.

Bourbonnais said there’s no reason why French immersion couldn’t exist alongside a new base-level program.

“We need to look at those programs and see if we can do better, but when you break an arm you don’t cut off the arm,” she said.

“I think that’s what we need to think, ‘how can we do better in French immersion,’ of course, but I don’t think the solution is eliminating it.”

Minutes after being sworn in as education minister last week, Hogan told reporters that the program, while good, has other issues inherent in it.

A report on second language learning from provincial court Judge Yvette Finn and former deputy education minister John McLaughlin earlier this year suggested scrapping French immersion in favour of a new program available to all incoming students. The report said that while the program has a 90 per cent graduation rate, more than 60 per cent of anglophone students aren’t in the program.

It also said the program can act as a form of streaming, as most children with various forms of learning difficulties aren’t in it.

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Hogan said that’s why the province is looking to put something new in place and says those with interest in the language will always have the opportunity for deeper study. He also says that those already in the program will be able to finish it, but the current plan is for this school year to be the last with new entrants.

“We’ll be looking in September to implement a new program that’s more comprehensive and will meet the needs that we have. It doesn’t mean that later in (students’ ) school years there won’t be opportunities to take courses that will be more advanced in the French language,” he said.

Chris Collins, executive director of the New Brunswick chapter of Canadian Parents for French, says the success rate of the program for those in it doesn’t mean it should be eliminated, rather expanded to ensure more have access.

“There are dozens and dozens of studies that have been done that show that young minds are absorbing when they’re working in that language, when they are studying in that language, that’s how you become bilingual,” he said.

Collins says the group is unhappy with the consultation process, calling it a “fait accompli” since the government has already made up its mind to go forward with the change. The original plan was to roll out the new program in September 2024. Pilot projects have been running at a couple dozen schools across the province and were to be scaled up next year, along with additional consultation before being rolled out province-wide.

The condensed timeline, along with the elimination of the immersion program, is part of what led former education minister Dominic Cardy to resign from cabinet last week, accusing the premier of taking “a wrecking ball” to the program.

Hogan says the final form of what will replace the immersion program in the fall has yet to be determined.

“We haven’t landed exactly on one, I expect to land on one within the next three months,” he said.