Image Credit: Shutterstock

VERNON - As parents in the North Okanagan send their children off to school this week, those heading to French Immersion classes are bucking a provincial trend with more families in the Vernon School District choosing a predominantly French education than elsewhere in the province.

For the 2018/2019 school year, the Vernon School District saw 14 per cent of its entire pupil enrolment opt for French Immersion, over 9.5 per cent of the entire study body provincially.

School District 22 spokesperson Maritza Reilly said she believed that families were seeing the benefit of speaking a second language and wanted that for their children. She said the school district had not been prompting French Immersion any more than any other program.

According to the statistics released by Canadian Parents for French British Columbia and Yukon over the last 14 years, the Vernon School District has seen a 39 per cent increase in French Immersion enrolment.

Vernon resident Jordan Lawrence made the decision to send both her daughters, now seven and 10 years-old, to French Immersion.

"I think it just gives them such a better chance living in Canada," Lawrence said. "We are a bilingual country... it opens up doors for working in government and politics and whatever they might want to do."

While the French language may not be prevalent in the North Okanagan, according to Statistics Canada, over 22 per cent of Canadians speak French as their first language.

Growing up in Vancouver and Kamloops Lawrence says the amount of French she learnt was "pretty minimal."

Part of her decision to send her daughters to French Immersion was also made based on her time at university in Quebec.

"All the other kids there who were from Ontario or Quebec had both languages," she said. "I don't know why we're not doing that here in B.C."

"I felt that us Westerners were being left behind, I think it would be really beneficial... to push French a little bit more in conventional education so that all these kids have the same chance as the rest of the country to have the jobs they might want to have when they are older," Lawrence said.

With École Beairsto Elementary being the only French Immersion school in the district (although some French Immersion classes are also held at other schools) parents have lined up throughout the night in January to get their kids enrolled in French Immersion.

Reilly said that practice has now ended and the School District has introduced a lottery system for French Immersion, with siblings getting first dibs on places. She said in January this year around 90 parents queued up through the night, the first starting at 6 p.m., in the hope of getting one of the 80 spots available for kindergarten French Immersion.

The School District has also reduced the yearly school bus courtesy rider fee from $300 per year to $200. Introduced in September 2018, the courtesy rider fee meant anyone attending French immersion, Montessori, or another special school, was classified as out of catchment area and required to pay the fee. Starting in September 2019 all school district students are required to pay $25, and out of catchment students required to pay $200.

The exact number of students enrolled at School District 22 will not be known until the end of September.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Ben Bulmer or call (250) 309-5230 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. 

News from © iNFOnews, 2019