Support systems for bilingual pupils in British Columbia

A report by Irene Wishart

In advance of the visit, I decided to set up some school visits within the two locations in order to look into the strategies used for supporting bilingual pupils in British Columbian schools.

The first school was Taylor Park Elementary School in Burnaby, which is a sizeable suburb of Vancouver. The school had been planned initially to serve an all-white catchment area but by the time it was built the inhabitants were significantly Asian in origin. It houses Primaries 1-5 this session, but is growing year on year.

The second school, also an elementary, was located in Alert Bay, Cormorant Island, and was all the more interesting due to its First Nations roots. The school’s ethos and philosophy presented a clear insight into that culture. It was fascinating to find that there were many parallels with Gaelic history, the movement for the preservation of the language and current thinking within Gaelic education in Scotland.