Denley: OCDSB elementary education must stress excellence, not equity and inclusion

The board must deal with the imbalance between French immersion and the English program, which has become an afterthought.

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board’s proposal to make big changes in the way it delivers elementary education garnered a fair amount of feedback over the summer. What was conspicuously missing was a wave of support for the tentative plan’s main ideas; changing French immersion delivery, making neighbourhood schools the norm, and integrating more children with special needs into regular classrooms.

It’s really no surprise that the board’s proposed homogenization of elementary education isn’t a big hit with the heterogeneous population it serves. The plan appears to take things away without offering anything very exciting in return. Fans of French immersion are worried that the program might become more limited. Some parents of children with special needs want to maintain the separate classes that are serving them well. More broadly, a neighbourhood school model, while it has benefits, would pretty much eliminate parents’ ability to choose a school that they perceive to be better.

The underlying problem with the board’s initial proposal for change is that it relies too much on the concepts of equity and inclusion, not enough on excellence. The board’s plan does talk about improving the quality of education, but it’s difficult to see how its main ideas would take the city’s public schools in that direction.

Instead, board bureaucrats see a future in which schools are standardized. It’s a kind of fast-food restaurant mentality; not good, but equally mediocre everywhere. Instead, the board should strive to offer each student the type of education best suited to them. That implies a greater diversity among schools and programs, not a reduction.

The problem the board must deal with is the imbalance between French immersion and the English program. It seems ridiculous, but in a city where 75 per cent of the population has English as a first language, instruction in that language has become an afterthought. It’s a dumping ground for students from low-income families, English-as-a-second-language learners, and children who didn’t succeed in French immersion. That’s not fair to those groups or to English-speakers generally.

French immersion, by contrast, is supposedly an elite program that will make children bilingual and set them up for a great job in the federal public service. Board stats show that nearly 80 per cent of students are in French immersion in Grade 1, but by Grade 8, the number is just over 50 per cent. That doesn’t scream success.

What’s needed is a revitalized English program with a strong academic emphasis, one that can compete with French immersion. People don’t like to talk about it, but the attraction of French immersion is not just language training, it’s the perception that your child will be with the brighter students.

If the same goal can be achieved without having to learn in a second language, that could be attractive. Judging by the French immersion dropout rate, a different choice would have been better for many students, but the board hasn’t worked too hard to provide it.

It’s important to note that being in an English-language school does not deprive a child of French instruction. The provincial government mandates core French training.

The board needs to both upgrade and focus its English-language program. The English schools already serve many students learning to speak English. At most English-only schools, between 25 and 50 per cent of students have a different mother tongue. Enhance the system’s ability to teach those children and promote it as a feature in specific schools, not a drawback.

The public board is familiar with marketing itself to compete with other boards. It needs to compete internally, too. Surely mastery of writing, reading and math, in one’s own language, can be made an asset. It would be particularly appealing to parents who don’t speak French themselves and can’t even help children with their homework. Call it “Enriched English” education.

Imagine an Ottawa English-language school board that focuses on English-language schooling. What a novel idea.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist and author. Contact him at [email protected]