The Upper Grand District School Board has made significant changes to the enrolment process for its French immersion program. The changes, aimed at reducing pressure on the program, will be in effect for the 2017-18 school year.
The biggest change is that students will now have to register for French immersion upon entering junior kindergarten, and no later. Senior kindergarten was an option previously.
The registration window for new JK registrants will open on Jan. 9, 2017.
As well, a new selection process has been implemented to ensure that new enrolment caps in French immersion are managed fairly.
The changes come in the wake of the board’s 2015-16 French review process, which lead to a motion in the spring to develop a selection process for registration in French immersion, one that was fair and transparent, according to a board press release issued Wednesday morning.
Under the changes, parents will have to indicate on the registration form whether their JK child is registering for ‘Regular English Track’ or ‘French Immersion’.
With the provision that JK is the only access point for French immersion, only children born in 2013 will be eligible next year. An enrolment cap has been placed on each of the board’s French immersion sites.
The deadline of 4 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017 has been put in place for fully completed registration forms. Registration forms completed after the deadline will be considered late, and processed only after all on-time registrations have been processed.
If the number of on-time registrants exceeds a school’s enrolment cap, a school-based random selection process will be initiated. Siblings of students currently enrolled in French immersion will take priority.
The selection process, if needed, will occur before Friday, Feb. 10, 2017. A third party scrutineer will be present to ensure the integrity of the process.
Schools requiring the random selection will be posted on the board’s website. Parents will be informed by email of their child’s registration status by the end of February.
Registration for JK French immersion will be conducted in person at the school sites, but is not conducted on a first-come, first-served basis.
In an email response to questions, Heather Loney, the board’s communications and community engagement officer, said French immersion has been “incredibly popular” in the over 40 years it has been offered in Upper Grand schools.
“With that success, however, comes significant pressure to manage the sustainability of the program,” she wrote.
Last year’s French review process, she said, sought to address the pressures, including the difficulty of accommodating students and hiring qualified teachers. French immersion is popular across Ontario and the country, and teachers are hard to find.
Loney added that multiple accommodation and boundary reviews, and managing equity of access and opportunities for Upper Grand students wanting to be part of French immersion program were ongoing challenges.
The review process resulted in the move, as of Sept. 1, 2017, to have JK as the only entry point for new French immersion students, and to place caps on the number of French immersion students in each school offering the program, she added.
“Based on enrolment numbers observed this year and enrolment projections for the 2017-18 school year, we would expect that some schools will not exceed the enrolment cap for FI,” Loney added in the email. “Other schools, particularly in Guelph, will have more applicants to the FI program than available spaces.”
