Rural Schools, Linguistic Identities, and Official Language Minority Rights: Insights from Rights Holder Parents in Quebec

Quebec’s Charter of the French Language, also known as Bill 101, regulates the language of instruction in schools to protect the French language. Although two public school systems coexist in Quebec—the Anglophone system and the Francophone system—access to English instruction is restricted. Under Bill 101, parents wishing to register their children in an English-language school in Quebec must hold a government-issued Certificate of Eligibility, issued only to those children who can prove the restrictive eligibility criteria as set out by Quebec legislators. The authors point out that the impact of Bill 101 on English-language schools in the province, particularly in rural areas, cannot be overstated. They note that rural English-language schools exist at the crossroads of political, social, and linguistic ecologies. Enrolment in the English-language school system plummeted from 256,251 students in 1971 to 96,235 in 2018, a 63 percent drop. Rural communities, whose Anglophone populations have always been small in comparison with those of Montreal and other urban centres, are disproportionately disadvantaged by Quebec’s language policies. As a result, many English-language schools in rural regions of the province have been forced to innovate, restructure, or close. The authors share the stories of 21 Anglophone rights-holder parents living in rural areas of Quebec who discuss the ways language of instruction policies influence their school choices and impact their children’s school experiences in rural contexts.

[QUESCREN Working Paper no. 9]

Montreal

Quebec English-Speaking Communities Research Network, Concordia University

March 2023

i-19p.

en