Odd new rules limit teaching of French
For decades the rallying cry in Quebec has been “Ne touchez pas à la loi 101.” Yet Quebec society, and particularly the English-speaking community in Quebec, has evolved significantly since the law was adopted in the 1970s. One major change is that English-language schools, including CEGEPs, and most parents of students in these schools, are committed to ensuring their students are bilingual, and able to live and work in French. Consequently, English-language public and private schools are offering extensive Frenchimmersion programs and expanded French-language programs.
But the regulations being adopted by the Quebec government remain rooted in a vanished past. Just as English-language and Frenchlanguage CEGEPs are not being encouraged to co-operate, the government is purposely limiting the amount of French that Englishlanguage independent (i.e., private) schools can teach.
The Quebec Court of Appeal (2007) and the Supreme Court of Canada (2009) both declared as unconstitutional the previous Quebec legislation limiting access to English-language, non-subsidized independent schools, concluding that the law must respect the legitimate right of parents to choose a clear and committed educational pathway for their children, be it in an English-language school or a French-language one. In response, the government implemented a new law featuring a Kafkaesque point system apparently designed to make it as difficult as possible to attend an English-language, non-subsidized independent school and to frustrate any legitimate choice of educational pathway by parents.
An astonishing aspect of the regulation is that it penalizes unsubsidized Englishlanguage schools (most private English-language primary schools in Quebec are unsubsidized) for teaching too much French.
The regulation classifies independent Englishlanguage schools as being in three categories (A, B and C). A primary school can be considered a Category A school in one of two ways. The first one requires the school to have a dominant majority (60 per cent) of the students in the first three years of primary to already have eligibility certificates (i.e., to have inherited that status from their parents, and whose parents have made the effort to obtain an eligibility certificate for English high school before beginning primary school). The second test, perversely, requires the school to teach 70 per cent of its program in English. In other words, having a bilingual and/or very rich French program for elementary students can result in the school losing its A status.
Under the point system, for parents who are not themselves holders of certificates, only Category A schools can really be conduits to a continued educational pathway in the English language through a subsidized Englishlanguage secondary school (many English-language independent secondary schools are subsidized). Among the schools of the Quebec Association of Independent Schools, which are all long-standing English-language private schools serving the English-
Restricting our capacity to teach French is not in the best interest of Quebec society.
speaking community in Quebec, in 2011-12 there were initially six Category A schools; today, there are only three. So, the regulation is clearly having the effect of eliminating the very thing that the courts have established should be protected by the law.
The point system is having the perverse effect of significantly impairing unsubsidized schools’ ability to produce fluently bilingual students who possess the French-language skills required to flourish in Quebec society.
Restricting our capacity to teach French is a major step backward for our schools, and not in the best interest of either Quebec society or the protection and development of French in North America.
While keeping French-language and English-language schools in neatly isolated silos might appeal to bureaucrats and politicians seeking to take positions for political reasons, it is harmful to both the English-speaking minority and to Quebec society as a whole.
If they were alive today, the original drafters of the Charter of the French Language would have been ecstatic if established English-language schools taught up to 70 per cent of their curriculum in French. Sadly, the current legislation (and labyrinthine point system) penalizes schools wanting to promote both strong English-language and French-language language skills.