'It's a good day': francophone students quietly surpass anglophones in math

New Brunswick's francophone school system quietly passed a milestone in December, with students catching up to their counterparts in the anglophone school system and scoring higher in international standardized tests in math.

The test score in the francophone system, released in December, was 505, while it was 488 in the anglophone system. Three years earlier the score was 500 in the francophone system and 503 in the anglophone system.

While the overall results in both school sectors still lag behind the Canadian average, they are above the world average on the 1,000-point scale. The francophone scores from the 2015 were the most improved in the country since the last Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, tests in 2012.

'It's a good day'

"It's a good day, so we should celebrate," said Marc Arseneau, the president of the francophone teachers association. "We see some improvements and we're really, really happy about that."

The improvement got some attention in the francophone media in December but went largely unnoticed provincially until Progressive Conservative MLA Jake Stewart, the opposition education critic, raised it in the legislature last week.

"There was something interesting going on that I don't think a lot of New Brunswickers knew about," he said.

Stewart called the improvement an achievement and asked Education Minister Brian Kenny what the anglophone sector could learn from the francophone system to improve its own test scores.

'No significant difference'

Kenny seemed reluctant to discuss it, pointing out there was "no significant difference" between the English and French systems in reading and science testing.

"The francophone sector did have better results in math and we want to congratulate them for them," he said.

But when Stewart persisted in asking about the improvements for a second day, Kenny accused the Tories of being political.

"What we see here today, day after day, is they're trying to find a wedge issue, to try and divide and conquer here in the province, and that is wrong," Kenny said.

72 countries tested

The results were released in December by the Council of Ministers of Education Canada, which oversees the PISA tests in this country every three years for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Fifteen–year–old students are tested in 72 countries.

Stewart said last week that he wasn't being divisive in praising the francophone sector improvement.

We don't have to be ashamed of good results.- Marc Arseneau, president francophone teachers' association

"I am talking about the good things, the good things in our francophone sector," he said. "It's hard [for the Liberals] to believe that somebody on the Opposition bench would discover this and then celebrate this for the francophone sector of our province."

Arseneau agreed the province could have been more vocal about talking about the scores.

"I would be more enthusiastic with those results," he said. "It's a good thing. We don't have to be ashamed of good results. We have to be proud of what we do."

The Department of Education didn't issue any news release about the PISA scores when they were released in December.

Behind Canadian average

New Brunswick's overall scores were behind the Canadian average in all three categories: 506 provincially compared to 528 nationally in science, 505 compared to 527 in reading, and 493 compared to 516 in math.

In science and reading, the francophone sector improved since 2012, though scores were still lower than the anglophone sector.

Kenny said in the legislature that the francophone sector's "community approach to education" had helped produce better math test scores, and those methods are now being shared with the anglophone sector.

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"We're going to be doing those best practices also in the anglophone sector," Arseneau said. "So we're learning from each other."

Arseneau said one example of community-based education is a program that sees students teach online skills to their grandparents, which reinforces what the children themselves learn in the classroom.

But "to pinpoint one thing, it's hard to say," he said. "It's multiple changes that bring improvements like that."

Teachers in the francophone system also meet within their schools for an hour every Wednesday afternoon to exchange ideas on how to improve, he said.