New Brunswick: Home and school group backs FSL changes

[Harold Schiffman]

Home and school group backs FSL changes

Wednesday April 9th, 2008
Appeared on page A6

The New Brunswick Federation of Home and School Associations, Inc. is
supportive of the recently announced changes to the FSL curriculum. As
a federation we are pleased the minister of education has embraced the
Intensive French program. We were supportive of the pilot and are glad
that it will be made available to all grade 5 students. As a
federation we support the universality of every student having an
equal opportunity for French second language instruction. In our
opinion the previous delivery method has not provided the required
results and the recent Commission on French Second Language provided
statistics supporting this opinion. As long standing members of the
Minister's Provincial Curriculum Advisory Committee as well as the
Minister's Committee on Testing and Evaluation, we have long been
cognisant of the lacklustre results of the current method of FSL
delivery.

Our Federation and its members have been advocating for an advanced
core French program for more than a decade. We have had a policy on
our books since 1998 which states our support of an enhanced French
core program that will allow all students the opportunity to become
bilingual and provide equity across the system. NBFHSAI supports the
intention of seeking ways to greatly improve the outcomes of FSL
curriculum and to best successfully deliver said curriculum to the
highest possible percentage of students. The federation is also
supportive of the minister's plan to use the time, previously devoted
to FSL in grade 1-4, for physical education, art and music.

CYNTHIA RICHARDS

President, New Brunswick Federation of Home & School Associations, Inc.



A letter to the Ombudsman.

It is now clear that the announcement of the cancellation of EFI has
come as an unwelcome surprise and shock to numerous residents of this
province. This response is understandable. Termination of a highly
valued program such as EFI would be of concern under any
circumstances, but it is especially so in the nation's only bilingual
province. As experts in the mathematical and statistical sciences at
the province's largest university, we find fault with the Report of
the French Second Language Commission. Firstly the data analysis in
the Commission's report is incorrect; the mathematical criticisms
raised in the response authored by D.J. Hamilton and M.K. Litvak are
correct. Secondly, we fail to see how the far-reaching recommendations
of the report follow from the analyses presented therein.

The minister's assertions justifying the decision to drop EFI are also
of concern to us. These appear to stem from ideological considerations
rather than from a careful scrutiny of both the type and quality of
data and its analysis. We think it is essential that policy decisions
of such magnitude as the elimination of EFI be taken only after
careful and repeated examination of data by experts. This is
especially so if a program is being replaced by one that is untested.

DAVID BARCLAY, VIQAR HUSAIN, COLIN INGALLS, BARRY MONSON, JEREY PICKA,
ALYSSA SANKEY, DARYL TINGLEY, MAUREEN TINGLEY, JAMES WATMOUGH, DAVID
BREMNER, ARUNDHATI DASGUPTA, JACK GEGENBERG, TARIQ HASAN, WILLIAM
KNIGHT, DAN KUCEROVSKY, RENJUN MA, BAHRAM RANGIPOUR, R. DON SMALL,
VLADIMIR TASIC, LIN WANG, and HUGH THOMAS

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/262659#
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