How effective was the 50-50 'Bathurst model' of French learning?

How can a government come up with an entirely new French second-language program, from scratch, in less than a year and be sure it will work? 

That's one of the questions dominating public consultation meetings on the province's plan to replace French immersion this fall with a new "50-50" model.

The answer, straight from Premier Blaine Higgs, is that he knows it will work because it's not entirely new. 

"The interesting thing about this program is that it worked very well in Bathurst, for, I think, 10 years," Higgs said in a year-end interview with CBC News in December.

"All of the statistics show that program worked really well, but yet it was dropped for the current French immersion program that didn't have the same level of functionality at all. So go figure. So we're not inventing the wheel here. We're inventing a program that worked."

Assessment scores, however, call into question the premier's assertion that the Bathurst program had better "functionality." 

And critics of the government's plan say the program was also very different in key ways that make it impossible to compare it to the current proposal.

The program to be phased in starting this fall would see all students in anglophone kindergartens and elementary schools spend half their day learning in English and half in French.

Higgs has complained that French immersion hasn't been effective, because not all graduates are bilingual and most anglophone students aren't even in the program.

Various potential replacement models are being tested at 24 schools around the province, but the 50-50 program for K-5 students that the province has chosen is not among them.

At the legislature's public accounts committee Jan. 15, the deputy minister of education for anglophone schools John McLaughlin told MLAs the 50-50 proposal "is not being piloted anywhere at this point."

That has prompted some participants at public consultation sessions to urge the government to slow down before it implements a replacement for immersion. 

"Take the next year and do actual research. Produce actual curriculum. Then, do what is best practice when it comes to implementing a new program: pilot it in a handful of willing schools," immersion teacher Derek Bradford said at the Fredericton session.

"And then maybe we can see if this program actually has a chance for success."

That's not necessary, according to the province, because of the Bathurst model's track record.

Department spokesperson Danielle Elliot says that, as in the current proposal, math and language arts were taught in English in the Bathurst system, while French was taught through language arts "as well as [though] thematic and exploratory learning" in other subjects.

McLaughlin told MLAs on the committee last week that "the success rate was very high" in Bathurst.

"It matched the success that the early immersion program got at the same time," in which students were immersed in French for 90 per cent of the day, he said.

"The 50 [per cent] in Bathurst, and the 90 per cent in all other communities, they matched," he said.

CBC News asked the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development for data to back up those claims.

It provided eight years' worth of assessments of students who enrolled in immersion in the 1982-83 school year through the 1989-90 school year. 

The assessments were done when the students reached Grade 12, so they were categorized by high school.

Students at Bathurst High School had been through the 50-50 program, while those at the 14 other schools started immersion in Grade 1 with 90 per cent of class time in French, the department said.

Here is what the numbers showed:

• 97.7 per cent of the Bathurst students reached the "intermediate" level of French or higher. Bathurst High ranked 13th among the 15 schools and was below the average of 99 per cent. 

• 77.7 per cent of the Bathurst High students reached the "intermediate-plus" level or higher. That was 12th among the 15 schools and below the average of 84.6 per cent.

• 38.6 per cent of Bathurst High students were at the "advanced" level or higher, ranking ninth among the 15 schools and below the average of 42.3 per cent.

Notably, "advanced" is the goal for graduates of the early immersion program — so in the Bathurst program, 60 per cent of grads didn't get there. 

The goal of the new 50-50 program, however, is for all anglophone students to acquire "conversational" French.

"Intermediate" French is defined by the department as a student being "able to satisfy routine social demands and limited requirements" at work, and capable of "simple conversation, with some paraphrasing."

So at 97.7 per cent, the Bathurst model was more successful at that level.

But critics point out it's not clear those results would be reproduced provincewide because of key differences between the the two half-and-half models.

"The Bathurst 50-50 was an elective. The parents chose that program," says Bob Bernier, a retired teacher who oversaw French second-language programs in English schools.

In contrast, the new 50-50 program will be mandatory for all anglophone students.

Bernier, now a member of Canadian Parents for French, says children of parents who oppose their kids learning any French may bring a negative attitude to class, affecting their success.

French-language education expert Léo-James Lévesque of St. Thomas University, an ardent opponent of the government's plan, agrees.

"In an optional class, students select to be there, want to be there, so [it's] much easier to find momentum in your motivation than when you have students who are told to be in a program." 

A second difference is that in Bathurst, parents could withdraw their children from the program at any time – just like immersion in general.

That won't be possible under the current 50-50 proposal.

"How's that going to work into a universal program? Fair question to ask, I would think," Lévesque says.

Whether withdrawals skewed the Bathurst assessments is hard to say: the department doesn't know how many students opted out of the program.

"As data collection practices have changed over the past 30-40 years, we do not have specific data tied to enrolment or withdrawals for local programs," said spokesperson Morgan Bell.

Bernier also believes the Bathurst results would have been helped by the fact students there would be exposed to some French around the city, which he says won't be the case in places like Sussex and Woodstock. 

It adds up to a tenuous comparison, Lévesque says.

"To say that it's the same … I think it's stretching it. To say the program in Bathurst was what it is and worked, yes, it worked for that area. But I don't think it produced the numbers that we're looking for — for the province."