Minister Lamrock and the Liberal Government have decided that there will be a Universal K-2 Program effective September 2008. They have called this the "Universal Program K-2". Curriculum modules will be developed to replace the current Core French program starting in January 2009 with the intent of exposing children to French and the Acadian culture during K-2. Unfortunately, at this point we don't know what these modules will look like. After grade 2, parents will be provided a choice of enrolling their children in either Grade 3 immersion or the new "English Prime" program. As expected, he has also decided to implement intensive French for all students currently in the Core program. After grade 5, they will have the choice of late immersion or English Prime with post-intensive French.

So, where does the decision leave us? We, like a lot of other people, have put a tremendous amount of work into fighting the decision to end Early French Immersion in Canada's only bilingual province. Was it worth it? Yes, for a number of reasons.

First, we must state that we are disappointed that the children who were registered in Early French Immersion for 2009 are not going to be able to enter that program, as we feel that they should have been grandfathered in. Further, we would have preferred a kindergarten or grade 1 entry-point with significant investment to make it more inclusive, and we worry about the untested and undeveloped aspects of the new plan. That said, the grade 3 entry-point to French immersion seems better than the original grade 6 plan developed by the government. It is our hope that grade 3, with appropriate preparation in K-2, will give children a reasonable chance of reaching advanced proficiency. We also hope that the promised additional resources will be provided to make immersion more inclusive.