Montreal private schools add grade 12 program to go around Bill 96

Quebec’s Bill 96, the province’s reform on French-language laws, passing means there will be caps on how many students are able to attend English CEGEPs.

In order to work around this some private English Montreal schools are offering grade 12 programs, so students don’t have to attend CEGEPs and can then skip to University.

One of them is TAV College in Côte-Des-Neiges. It’s set to welcome their first-ever group of students into its Grade 12 program for fall 2022.

“It’s only fair for there to be a viable option for these students to be able to pursue post-secondary education if they can’t do it within the regular deck of a college system with or within the regular Quebec system,” said Eli Meroz, director of studies, TAV College.

“There’s a lot of a lot of interest. We’re seeing a lot of inquiries from parents whose kids are now in secondary three, secondary four, and in anticipation of what may come in the future.”

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The one-year program allows students to obtain an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD), after which students are able to directly apply to university programs.

Bill 96 would otherwise require all students at English CEGEPS to take three core courses in French or if eligible take additional courses on the French language.

“Bill 96 is a bill that has many components, but we specifically are addressing only one of them. And that is the  limitation of the number of students that could be admitted. The number of English students that we could be admitting,” explained Meroz.

For those who do not have the speaking and writing knowledge of French required by the government, they cannot get a diploma.

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Meroz says this isn’t a shortcut – students within the program will have to still do two extra years – one for high school and another while in university.

“We don’t see it as realistic that there’s any way that we can bring them to the level where they are taking three program specific courses in French and then having to write a French exit exam. It is not something that we will be able to attain.”

Kirkland’s Kuper Academy was among the schools to recently implement the program, something Bryan St-Louis, head of press relations at the Ministry of Education, told CityNews “was not authorized” by the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Higher Education. “Thus, the quality of these services is not at all framed by Quebec laws, and Quebec does not award any diploma for these courses.”

“It is prohibited to promote these services, regardless of the educational institution, since they are only authorized by a competent minister and therefore cannot be mentioned on the institution’s permit.”

Adding, “this sends a very bad message in relation to the Quebec francophone and anglophone college network, which offers pre-university and technical training of excellent quality. The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education will carefully monitor the development of the situation and list the establishments offering these programs.”