ESL children failing: Report
Native groups, immigrants hurt Funding is election issue, boards say
Ontario’s public school boards are using the federal election to highlight the plight of immigrant and native children, who they say are disproportionately failing and dropping out of school because they don’t have enough English language supports.
Education may be a provincial responsibility, but if the federal government is going to bring more immigrants to Ontario it needs to ante up the money to educate them, says a paper being released today by the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association. The school boards want more teacher training and funding for both groups of children, a tracking system to follow newcomers through school and full-time kindergarten for native students.
“ The federal government can set the ( immigration) numbers but the schools are the ones that have to provide that basic training to the children,” said association president Rick Johnson. About 54 per cent of Grade 3s passed Ontario’s standardized reading test in 2003, compared with 34 per cent of English as a Second Language students.
In math, 64 per cent passed, but the average among ESL students was only 50 per cent. Only 50 per cent of ESL students passed the Grade 10 literacy test, compared with 82 per cent of English- language students. The province provides about $ 3,000 ESL funding over four years when a student arrives from a non-English speaking country and the federal government gives a one- time grant of about $200, even though research shows it takes five to seven years to become proficient in writing, said Jill Maar, curriculum co- ordinator for the York District School Board. About 35 per cent of the board’s 105,000 students come from a home where the first language isn’t English, but last year there were only 91 ESL teachers in the board. Boards get nothing for students who arrive in Canada via another English- speaking country or for those born here in homes where no English is spoken, she said.
In the same way that Torontoarea boards are struggling to cope with an influx of immigrant children, northern boards are trying to stem the dropout rate of native students. About 53 per cent of native people in Northern Ontario don’t have a high school diploma compared with 25.6 per cent of the general population. Many arrive in non-reserve schools speaking a variety of English that is different from the standard used in the school, which doesn’t have the supports to help them.
In Kenora- area public schools in northwestern Ontario, a pilot project focusing on improving native children’s oral language skills has boosted achievement dramatically, says education director Janet Wilkinson of the Keewatin- Patricia District School Board, where one in three students is aboriginal.
“ At one school, where no child was meeting standards on provincial tests, our oral language program has made a significant difference,” said Wilkinson.
“ So we very much support the call for language programs because we have proof they make a difference.”