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A Loon Lake parent says his daughter will have to leave French immersion earlier than expected after a northwest Saskatchewan school division scaled back the program due to a teacher shortage.
“She’s in Grade 2 right now, and she’ll be having to make the move into English, which is going to be a hard transfer,” said Greg Cardinal.
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The Northwest School Division (NWSD) will no longer offer French immersion from kindergarten to Grade 4 starting in the 2026–27 school year. The program will continue for Grades 5 through 12.
Director of education Jennifer Williamson said scaling back the program allows the division to focus its limited staffing on maintaining quality instruction for students who remain enrolled.
“Our priority is providing a high-quality, sustainable French immersion program,” she said.
Williamson said the division has struggled to fill positions in recent years, with about four French immersion teachers currently in place and two vacancies unfilled.
She said the division is also facing growing competition for qualified teachers across the country.
“If you are a qualified French immersion teacher at this point in time, you can basically go anywhere in Canada to teach,” Williamson said, adding that the division is competing with larger centres that may be more attractive to candidates, both in terms of opportunities and established programs.
About 27 students are expected to be affected.
For families, the change could disrupt long-term participation in immersion.
“Once you’ve missed a couple years of French, I don’t think she’d be able to get back into it,” Cardinal said.
He said his family chose the program to expand future opportunities “for the kids to work elsewhere in their future.”
“You can work anywhere in the country if you can speak French as another language, and it opens up government jobs for our kids. And even in the world, there’s a lot of French spoken widely.”
An expert says teacher shortages are a widespread issue, particularly outside major centres, where divisions compete for a limited pool of qualified candidates.
“This challenge is felt most acutely in smaller cities, towns, and rural communities,” said Stephen Davis, director of the Le Bac program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina.
He noted that many graduates begin their careers in larger urban centres, making it more difficult for rural divisions to attract and retain French immersion teachers.
According to federal labour projections, French immersion teaching is expected to face a moderate risk of shortage nationally from 2024 to 2033.
Davis said early access to immersion is key to language development and has broader benefits for students and communities.
“Research consistently demonstrates that French immersion programs are by far and away the most effective way to learn French as an additional language in Canada,” he said.
“We also know from decades of research that it is beneficial to provide ample opportunity for early immersion in the primary years… especially in minority language contexts such as French in Saskatchewan.”
He added that learning an additional language supports more than just future employment.
“Learning new languages is not only beneficial for employment opportunities, but also to develop empathy, critical thinking skills, greater appreciation for cultural and linguistic diversity, as well as exposure to new worldviews and new ways of thinking.”
The division said it will continue to recruit teachers and hopes to expand the program again in the future if staffing improves.
The Northwest School Division operates 22 schools across 15 communities, including Meadow Lake, Turtleford and Marshall, and serves approximately 4,300 students.
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