A. Rights Holders

Under the Canada Clause provisions of the Charter of the French Language, students from outside Quebec who received the majority of their instruction in the English language or whose parents received such instruction, are eligible to attend Quebec’s English-language schools. In 2002-03, students born in the rest of Canada represented 8.7 percent of total enrolment in the English sector, a decrease from the 9.9 percent of the 1998-99 period. Foreign-born students saw their percentage climb over the same period from 4.7 to 5.1 percent. Students born in the province represented 86.2 percent of the province’s English-language sector.

B. Elementary and High Schools

Since its release in early February 1992, the provincial government’s Task Force on English Language Education in Quebec chaired by Gretta Chambers (known as the Chambers Report) has become an important reference for much of the discussion about the state of English-language education.

In the 15 years after the adoption of the Charter of the French Language, the English Language school system saw its enrolment fall considerably. Citing a 57-percent decline between 1972 and 1990, from 250,000 to 108,000, the Task Force on English Education in Quebec presented a rather gloomy forecast of the English-language school system (French enrolment declined by 24 percent over the same period). It noted that the greatest decline occurred between 1976 and 1986, and that the drop was particularly felt on the Island of Montréal (some 64 percent between 1970 and 1990).

As the members of the Task Force noted, “a community’s education of its young is one of the building blocks on which its future is founded. If it leaves the education of its young people to others, others will eventually define its cultural values and choose its social priorities” (Task Force on English Language Education, February 1992). One of the aspects of the mission of English education in Quebec was to give students knowledge of their English-language cultural heritages and the contribution their community has made to the development of Quebec society. At the time an important link was made between enrolment trends and the control and management of the English-language school system.

According to the Task Force, “Bill 101, restricting admissibility to English schooling, has accelerated the decline by shutting out a significant portion of the English school network’s traditional replacement clientele.” In further commenting on the status of the English-speaking community, the Task Force warned, “if it is prevented from renewing itself, it will simply fade away. Continuing to shut it off from its traditional sources of replenishment can and will be construed as a delayed but deliberate death sentence.”

The English-language school system has undergone considerable evolution since the Task Force report was published. At the time of its release in 1992, the Quebec Ministry of Education predicted that declines in English enrolment would end and that there would be an increase in numbers over the course of the 1990s. Their forecast was accurate, but the source of the increases may have major ramifications, not only for the future of the English school system but also for the Quebec Anglophone community. In effect, the demographic changes to the clientele of English-language schools inevitably undercut the degree to which Quebec’s English culture and heritage remain an institutional mission.

Table 11 shows that in the 1991-2002 period, while mother-tongue-English enrolment in Quebec English-language schools dropped by approximately 2.5 percent, mother-tongue-French enrolment grew by about 100 percent. In the case of mother-tongue Allophones between 1991 and 1998, numbers remained relatively stable. However, since then, the English-language schools have seen nearly a 15-percent increase in enrolment from this source.

Between 1991 and 2003, enrolment of mother-tongue Francophones in English-language schools in Montréal has increased by about 35 percent, and initially this offset the loss in the number of mother-tongue Anglophones over the 1990s, averting an overall reduction in overall enrolment. Since 1998, rising numbers of Allophone enrolment in Montréal English-language schools has contributed to an increase in the sector from approximately 61,500 in 1998-99 to nearly 64,500 in 2002-03.

Outside Montréal, between 1991 and 2003, the growth in the numbers of mother-tongue-French students in English-language schools has jumped by nearly 115 percent. Table 12 shows the consequence of this trend, as the share of mother-tongue-French students in the English sector rose from 15.2 percent to 27.9 percent in a dozen years.

At the same time, there has been a modest rise in the number of mother-tongue Anglophones enrolled in the province’s French-language schools. In 1991, there were about 15,700 mother-tongue-English students enrolled in the province’s French-language schools, and in 2003 they numbered nearly 18,000, representing a 15-percent increase over that period. The share of mother-tongue Anglophones in the French sector has also risen from 1.5 to 1.8 percent.

While there has always been a difference between Montréal and the regions in the rest of Quebec in the composition of English schools, the divergence has grown over the past decade. The increasing presence of Francophones in English-language schools outside Montréal no doubt has an important bearing on the “community” mission of English-language schools. It is an issue that merits further inquiry.

Mother-tongue-French students represent only 6 percent of total enrolment in Montréal’s English-language schools and about one-quarter of the English sector in the rest of Quebec. As in the regions where English schools have benefited most from the influx of mother-tongue-French students, the total enrolment in the English-language sector outside Montréal is greater than enrolment on the Island of Montréal. There are now more mother-tongue Francophones in English-language schools than there are Anglophones in French-language schools.

In fact, virtually the entire increase in enrolment in English-language public schools occurred outside the Montréal region.

Much of the increase in mother-tongue-French enrolment in English-language schools is concentrated in a few areas within the province. Between 1991 and 2001, the largest real increase occurred in the Montérégie, which accounted for more than 25 percent of the overall rise in the number of Francophones in English-language schools. Montréal accounted for over 20 percent of this increase, followed by the Laurentians with over 10 percent, and the Eastern Townships and Québec City with 7.5 percent each.

In some regions, the very viability of English-language schools appears dependent on the presence of mother-tongue-French students. For example, the ratio of Francophone to Anglophone students in the region of Québec Centre is about seven to one (with 280 mother-tongue-French students, compared with 40 mother-tongue-English students). It is between three and four to one in such areas as Chaudière, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and the Mauricie.

Note