A portrait that evolves
The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) published a new report on Tuesday to highlight how strong immigration over the last 20 years has profoundly changed the portrait of schools in the province. While they represented 83% of students at the turn of the 2000s, young people with a French mother tongue now represent just under 76%. If the share of English speakers remained stable at just over 8%, that of allophones practically doubled, going from 9% to 16%.
French benefits from it
Despite this apparent decline for French, everything indicates that French-speaking schools took the opportunity to stock up. In fact, no less than 91% of students attend school in French. This is two points more than 20 years ago. This increase is mainly due to students with English or other mother tongue. Over a period of approximately 20 years, between 2000 and 2021, “the proportion of students with English as their mother tongue attending a French-language school has increased significantly, from 18.4% to 31.9%,” notes the OQLF on this subject.
The school becomes French in Montreal
The gains in French are largely attributable to Montreal. While one in four Montrealers attended school in English in 2000, there are now less than one in five. The share of English-speaking students in Montreal attending school in French has almost doubled, from 17.7% to 31.9%. Among allophones, the proportion increased from 78.3% to 90%. During this time, it remained stable among French speakers, at 97%. As of 2011, Montreal had more allophone than French-speaking students, but “this situation was reversed in 2021”, among other things due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the drop in immigration. However, this could be “temporary”, according to the OQLF.
Fewer eligible students in English
Why do so many English-speaking and allophone students attend school in French? Because they are less and less eligible for school in English, notes the OQLF. Under current rules, only 72% of native English-speaking students are eligible for school in English. This eligibility rate was 85% in 2000. The decrease in eligibility is also observed among allophones, which can be explained by migration which increasingly comes from international – rather than from the rest of Canada – and the fact “that we find more and more people born here who constitute the second or third generation of their family educated in French,” we read in the report.
PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
English-speaking and allophone students are less and less eligible for school in English, notes the OQLF.
Sharp increase in temporary stay
One of the rare groups where English is gaining ground is among students on a temporary stay in Quebec. The OQLF notes that the number of authorizations to study in English has tripled over the past 20 years, with a major increase of 216%. Unsurprisingly, the Office attributes this upward change first and foremost to the number of non-permanent residents which is increasing within the Quebec population. Unusually, no less than 29% of students who have obtained authorization to study in English have French as their mother tongue. While at the beginning of 2000, barely 83 French-speaking students on temporary stay had requested to study in English, there were more than 1,355 in 2021.
With Pierre-André Normandin, The Press