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For the majority of elementary school students in Regina, French language drills and ‘Muzzy’ videos are no longer a part of their school days.
In past years, Core French classes were a part of every public elementary school student’s week in the Queen City. However, divisions have been moving away from the offering, including Regina Public Schools, which is officially allowing schools to make their own choices as of this year.
“Part of this, I think, just is a correction that likely should have happened some years ago,” explained Mark Haarmann, Director of Education and CEO for the Regina Public School Division.
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School divisions have what’s called Locally Determined Option instructional minutes. Regina Public had been using those to teach French, but Haarmann said over the last 10 years many schools slowly moved away from that.
Part of it had to do with the difficulty of finding qualified teachers in Saskatchewan. But Haarmann said the division has made the overall move because of a renewed focus from the Ministry of Education on literacy – reading and writing.
“Having every kid read at grade level by the end of Grade Three is something the ministry has talked about for the last year or two, and which we are aligning our programming with,” he said.
Haarmann explained the focus is coming with more accountability in the form of provincial assessments.
“I know that the ministry says that school divisions won’t be compared, but the reality is, I think we will. And quite frankly, I think this province will be compared with other provinces in the country,” he said.
While Haarmann said literacy rates aren’t necessarily a concern for Regina Public, there’s still work to do in that area. This past June, 67 per cent of its Grade Three students could read at grade level, with 44 per cent of students identifying as First Nations, Métis, and Inuit reading at grade level.
Mark Haarmann, Regina Public Schools Director of Education (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)
Those numbers are up slightly from the year before, and Haarmann thinks this change will keep pushing them in the right direction.
In the spring, the division built a process with schools for them to make these decisions. Principals consult first with staff, then look at the data, then talk to school community councils before making a final decision. With community interest, a few schools moved to Cree language instruction instead.
Core French is still offered at the high school levels where there’s enough interest, and French Immersion is still offered as well.
As of the 2026-27 school year, 35 per cent of Regina’s public elementary schools still offer Core French classes to students. Haarmann said if school communities decide in the future they want to bring back Core French, they’ll be able to do that.
French as culture
The argument can be made that French is a part of Canadian culture.
Haarmann believes that’s part of the reason the programming was continued for so long. But, he said there are now many more opportunities out there to learn a new language – pointing to new technology – that it’s made it less and less important for that learning to happen in school.
“Much of the research shows that 100 minutes of a second language instruction is not particularly effective in building second language skills,” added Haarmann.
“So it really seemed like it was time to make a decision that would be in the best interest of students, best interest of the organization’s goals around teaching and learning.”
Having as many students as possible be exposed to the French language is important to the province’s French people’s organization – Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise – according to its president, Denis Simard.
However, Simard said the group understands the decisions school divisions are making regarding student achievement.
“There are so many other ways that we can connect to the French language, and I think if the school boards can make those extra efforts, and they teach the history of our country properly in regard to its bilingualism and why it’s bilingual, what brought on that bilingualism in our country,” he explained.
Simard was glad French immersion will still be available for those who do want to learn the language.
He said there’s been a positive trend in Saskatchewan of more students graduating high school with the ability to speak French, and he hopes this move away from Core French won’t affect those numbers.
Other divisions
Regina Public isn’t alone in moving away from French classes. Regina Catholic Schools paused offering Core French to students in English schools as a division-wide decision in 2023. It found literacy rates had dropped coming out of the pandemic, so the French instruction minutes were put into reading and writing.
According to the division’s annual report, 81 per cent of Grade Three students could read at grade level at the end of the 2019 school year, and that dropped to 70 per cent in 2021.
The division then moved its French resources entirely to bolstering its French immersion program.
Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools hasn’t offered Core French at all of its elementary schools in any recent time. Currently, it’s taught in six of its 43 elementary schools and one high school, with 11 French immersion elementary schools and four French immersion high schools.
Saskatoon’s public division also doesn’t and hasn’t offered Core French at all of its schools, with only eight of its 48 elementary schools and six of its 10 high schools offering the course.
