In Edmonton's example; Math, Phys Ed, Language Arts could be taught in Mandarin, History, Social Studies, Geography could be taught in English.  In a BILINGUAL program, 50% of the subject matter is taught in the target language and the remaining in English.  This ensures that students attain and maintain a high level command of English as well as the target language.

Yes!! Both the school board and the Edmonton Chinese Bilingual Education Association generously offered to help us get our program off the ground. 

This program needs to be approved at each individual school district level.  So, the Vancouver program will need Vancouver School Board (VSB) approval and North Van program will need the North Van School District (NVSD) approval. 

As per the BC rules, Kindergarten max is 22 kids, and Grade 1 max is 24 kids.

12 in total (5 elementary, 4 middle, 3 high schools), with 2,000 students enrolled out of a total of 80,000 students in Edmonton.

Absolutely! And it is more efficient too – why not work together towards our common goal?  Vancouver + Burnaby + North Shore would make up a majority of the population in BC. 

Acid test: How many parents would sign their children up for this program! If we can get 2 classes going (K & 1) we think that would be enough to get the program up and running! We do not know which school the program will be launched at.  

We intend to work out a transportation plan (ie school bus service) that may or may not be subsidized.

The answer about funding for such programs would be best answered by the local school board as each district has its unique budget and spending priorities. Ordinarily, programs are all funded by the global school board budget. Remember that our children will be taught by teachers regardless of what program they are in and teachers will teach whatever children are in the system. Therefore, other than startup costs (for initial resources for such a program), the costs should be within the existing school budget.  Because this would be a public school program, parents would not be expected to pay out of pocket for their child to attend. Of course, there may be limited enrollment (and therefore spaces), but cost to the student to attend should not be an issue. As in any public school program, parents are free to do their own fund-raising to purchase resources that would benefit their children’s learning.

Remember that we are trying to increase CHOICE for our students within the public school system. Currently, there is only French immersion (based on lottery selection due to high demand). If there were more programs of choice, school boards would not have to resort to lotteries to determine student entry. Also, students would have more diverse educational opportunities.  In fact, our children could conceivably become tri-lingual as French is introduced as another language of learning as is done at the Grade 3 level in the Edmonton Mandarin bilingual program. Wouldn't that be a fantastic gift of language for them?

Heritage language schools are suitable for children who already have oral fluency in the language and they focus on literacy i.e. writing skills. It is assumed that children speak Chinese in the home and thus conversational/spoken skills are not taught in heritage language skills (or minimally done). Hence, heritage language schools are not suitable for English-speaking households. One cannot hope to acquire oral fluency attending a heritage language school once a week. The analogy would be trying to learning English by attending a Saturday morning class to learn your abc’s, learn to read a few words and the rest of the week being immersed in an Chinese environment. Although one might eventually read a bit of English, oral fluency would certainly would be limited.

The purpose of this Mandarin bilingual program is to give interested students from English-speaking backgrounds to gain language proficiency in an opportunity that they would not otherwise have.

The reality is that this program would most appeal to students from English-speaking backgrounds. Students from Mandarin-speaking backgrounds would most likely be seeking enrollment in English kindergarten/Grade 1 to increase their English fluency. This is proven by the fact that most French immersion students come from English speaking backgrounds.

In the future, if space and staffing permits, students with Chinese-speaking backgrounds could enter the program at various feeder points depending on their abilities (to be assessed by teachers).