Project Overview

The Government of British Columbia is pursuing its efforts to address the shortage of French teachers and is proposing a project consisting of eight initiatives.

1. The Government of B.C. will provide overarching systemic support for more effective and sustainable French teacher recruitment and retention (FTRR) efforts across the French education sector by facilitating capacity building and cross-governmental collaborations, adding seats to French teacher training programs at post-secondary institutions, supporting coordination of the immigration of French teachers, and improving the French teacher international certification process and teacher workforce data collection.

2. Make a Future, an online provincial education job board, will see the creation of a recruitment microsite targeting French-language teachers and establish a recruitment enhancement fund to issue grants to school districts to conduct specific recruitment and retention activities that best fit their context.

3. Support will be provided to the University of British Columbia (UBC), namely to increase enrollment to the existing French specialization options in the French-Language Teacher Education program (BEd) and redirect generalist teachers with sufficient language proficiency to a new Core French Certificate.

4. In addition, Simon Fraser University (SFU) will increase access to a network of professional development experts by providing workshops and resources for teachers working in FML and FSL contexts. SFU will also implement a graduate program in educational leadership and coordinate a provincial network of school administrators in the goal of retaining French-language teachers.

5. UBC Okanagan will also take steps to build a long-term presence of French teachers in the B.C. Interior by increasing the number of students applying to become French teachers, developing future French teachers’ proficiency and confidence to speak French, develop their identity as French teachers, as well as provide currently practising French teachers with greater access to professional development.

6. Canadian Parents for French B.C. (CPF) will develop programming to work with new French teachers in remote and rural school districts to improve retention rates. CPF will support community and cultural activities for teachers, helping them feel better connected both culturally and socially. In addition, the British Columbia Language Coordination Association will offer professional learning activities to support the development of language leadership capacity across B.C.’s French Immersion and Core French school districts.

7. The Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CSF) will expand its teacher recruitment capacity and take part in the larger provincial workforce marketplace. Recruitment tools and human resource data will also be analyzed to propose innovative solutions to the challenges posed by teacher turnover rates.

8. Four provincial school districts are proposing innovative and locally adapted means by which to address the challenges associated with meeting the demand for French Immersion teachers, such as hiring an itinerant French teacher.