New Brunswick child literacy rates plummet to 20-year low

Child literacy rates among school age child in New Brunswick have dropped to their lowest levels in 20 years, according to Wednesday’s state of the child address presented by the province's child and youth advocate.

Kelly Lamrock identified three challenges which need government’s attention:

• Ensuring that children can read by the time they are eight-years-old.
• Providing teens with mental health services.
• Provide the next generation the tools to learn.

Literacy was the focus of the report, which stated that only 59.9 percent of kids in Grade 2 are meeting the standard of reading, compared to 83.6 per cent in 2010.

“It was kind of heartbreaking to see we’re right back where we were in 2000,” said Lamrock. “The one thing I hope came across, we sometimes feel as though, ‘Oh, nothing ever changes,’ but it did and mostly because teachers and principals and a focus and resources, it wasn’t any one government or any one minister.”

“We can do better and the fact that we’ve slid back to where we were in 2000 at least we know we can get back to where we were in 2010,” he added.

The literacy rates slid to levels not seen since 2000, which has Lamrock particularly concerned for the education system.

“It is a frustration, because I think sometimes people assume it never changed, but it did, between 2000 and 2010,” he said. “Different governments and different stripes and mostly teachers and principals with the right resources go us out of last place in Canada and got us to the highest rates ever and in 12 years we’ve never been as high as we were in 2010.”

Susan Holt, leader of the New Brunswick Liberal Party, shared her reaction to the report.

"It hit me to hear the stats presented like that,” she said, “That we reached a height of 84 per cent of literacy in Grade 2s and that we've fallen back over the last 10 years, so yeah I think it's the responsibility of all the governments over those years to be watching that information and understanding why it's happening.”

New Brunswick Education Minister Bill Hogan attended the event Wednesday morning.

Hogan said that classroom composition issues are complex and ending streaming for the French immersion program isn't going to fix that.

"He talked about classroom composition issues, having an negative affect on the Anglophone school system, I agree with what he said,” said Hogan on Lamrock’s address. “I think that we need to look at streaming because it does have a negative impact on the English classes. One of the things that struck me the most when he talked about the difference in class sizes between the two groups of students.”

"The message I want to deliver -- it's been well vetted. The politicians can decide, whether we have children learning in separate classrooms, common classrooms, subject-driven instruction. It's important that kids learn French and it's important that kids have equal classrooms where they can all learn,” Lamrock said.

Lamrock said cancelling French immersion is not necessarily the answer and that measures, such as more resources and classroom supports for children with behavioural problems and learning difficulties, could be taken.