École Père Mercure may be a French language school, but one of its goal is bilingualism.
The students of École Père Mercure in North Battleford take all their lessons (except English Language Arts) in French, and conduct their daily school lives in French. Many of them also speak French at home.
But, as the school's community liaison says, outside the school their students must interact with an English-based community. Jenny Kellgren says they quite naturally learn to speak and understand English because it is all around them.
As a result, many École Père Mercure students have English well-established as a second language by the time they start learning not only spoken English but also the written language in the English Language Arts classes that begin in Grade 4.
Ecole Pere Mercure is the only school in North Battleford - in the region, in fact - to be part of what is sometimes called the "third" school division - the Conseil des école fransaskoise (CÉF). In a CÉF school, French is used as a daily learning and communication tool. All correspondence, report cards, parent teacher interviews, committee and school council meetings are in French.
All classes, of course, are conducted in French, with the exception of the English Language Arts course beginning in Grade 4, which the CÉF says leads to students graduating with high levels of bilingualism.
"When they obtain their diploma, graduates are well prepared, as responsible, bilingual and accomplished citizens, to follow their dreams in either official language, or both," says the CÉF website.
The Francophone school in North Battleford is named after the man who made it possible for fransaskoise (Francophones living in Saskatchewan) to have their own schools by refusing to pay a 1981 Saskatchewan traffic ticket written in English only. Although Father André Mercure died before the Supreme Court rendered its judgment, in 1988 the court recognized that Article 110 of The North West Territories Act was still operative, technically making Saskatchewan a bilingual province.
Subsequent to that, the rights of Francophones to have their own schools became a reality in Saskatchewan.
The right to a first-language French education is defined by Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Under the Charter, a child is eligible to attend a French-language school if the parent (right-holder) is a Canadian citizen and meets one or all of the following criteria: the first language learned and still understood is French; he or she was educated, at the elementary level, in French in Canada (this excludes French immersion programs offered at English-language schools); he or she is the parent of a child who has received or who is receiving his or her education at the elementary or secondary level in French in Canada (this excludes French immersion programs offered at English-language schools).
All children of Francophone heritage are welcome to attend CÉF schools, regardless of whether they already speak French. Landed immigrants are also eligible to attend. Any parent who does not meet the criteria of a right-holder can request admission for their child to a Fransaskois school. A committee will evaluate the request while taking into consideration the child's language skills and the capacity of the family to support the child in his or her Francophone education.
