To address these challenges, the project combines a literature review and environmental scan that identifies promising programs and practices and a survey of 500 school guidance counsellors across Canada that gathers insight on both barriers to engagement and best practices in working with opportunity youth. Together, these sources highlight obstacles to engagement and uncover practical strategies for supporting opportunity youth. The mission of the project is to find tangible ways to reach and engage this population, understand what practices and tools can motivate them to engage in career planning, and learn what further resources are needed to support career counselling practices.

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The first aspect of the project aims to implement and evaluate the ASQ and ASQ: SE, which are tools for measuring children’s general and social-emotional development, in educational centres. The goal is to collect, analyze, and use evidence-based data to support child development in French-speaking contexts. The second part of the project aims to develop a structured collaborative process for sharing knowledge about each child between early childhood education services and schools during the transition to school. The goal is to better support each child according to their needs and characteristics.

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The project consists of three components:

• Environmental scan of early learning frameworks and policy documents from Canadian and select international jurisdictions
• Key informant interviews conducted with early learning experts
• Literature review to compile formal evidence on the effectiveness of different approaches to promote early literacy, with a particular focus on translating policy to practice.

The final report is to synthesize learning from the three project components to explain the similarities and differences between approaches to promote early literacy development in different jurisdictions and across different settings.

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• Explore Your Horizons provides information about academic and career options (including labour market trends, costs, and financing of PSE), skills development, and support for career exploration and planning. Delivered over three years through workshops, a magazine, and a members-only Web site, Explore Your Horizons is offered in Manitoba and New Brunswick to students in all income groups.
• Learning Accounts provides an early promise of substantial financial support to students provided they are accepted into a recognized PSE program. Learning Accounts is offered to students in New Brunswick from families with incomes at or below the provincial median.

The intent of Future to Discover is to test the effectiveness of these interventions in improving access to PSE, particularly among youth who are disadvantaged by family income or educational background, both individually and in combination.

Methodology

Future to Discover was developed by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, in partnership with the provincial governments of Manitoba and New Brunswick. Future to Discover offices were set up in each province to deliver the interventions. The Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) is conducting the evaluation of the interventions.

The research design for Future to Discover is ambitious and complex. Similar to many other SRDC projects, Future to Discover is a social experiment, in which student volunteers are randomly assigned to program groups that receives one or both of the interventions, or to a comparison group. Because program and comparison groups are similar in all other respects, differences in students’ experiences can be attributed to the impact of the interventions.

Several different program and comparison groups were needed to test the effectiveness of the interventions (alone and in combination) separately for the two provinces, for two linguistic groups (in New Brunswick), and among students with higher or lower levels of family income and/or parental education. To secure a sufficient sample for analysis, students were recruited in two cohorts over successive years in New Brunswick.

Over 5,400 students were initially recruited to the project: 1,042 students in Manitoba, and 4,382 in New Brunswick, with the latter equally split between the Francophone and Anglophone education sectors. Assigned to receive Explore Your Horizons were 1,747 students (1,172 in New Brunswick and 575 in Manitoba); 1,097 lower-income students in New Brunswick were assigned to receive Learning Accounts.

For all these students, the main impact of interest is enrolment in any form of PSE (apprenticeships, private vocational institutions, university, or college), and completion of their first year of studies. Other outcomes of interest include students’ knowledge and attitudes towards PSE, and related behaviours, such as time spent on homework and graduating high school. Future to Discover also involves an implementation evaluation and a cost-benefit analysis.

Status

Future to Discover was launched in 2004, and most participating students have graduated from high school. The delivery of Explore Your Horizons and Learning Accounts has been completed. In 2007, SRDC published Future to Discover Pilot Project: Early Implementation Report which documented the planning and first year of implementation of the pilot project. A second report entitled, Future to Discover: Interim Impacts Report, was published in November 2009. The second report evaluated the implementation of Explore Your Horizons and Learning Accounts, and presented findings on early outcomes. The Future to Discover: Post-secondary Impacts Report presents impacts on students’ enrolment in PSE and other post-secondary activities. It includes a cost-benefit analysis, and was published in November 2012. The latest results for New Brunswick were published in October 2019.

Funding

The Future to Discover pilot project was funded by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Funding is continuing under an agreement with the New Brunswick Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.

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The goal of AVID is to support “middle achieving” students with a B to C average who are motivated to pursue PSE. It encourages students to acquire skills that promote academic success (such as good work habits and organizational skills) and that enable them to cope with the demands of the more rigorous courses that are often pre-requisites for entry to post-secondary education. The program places students in these advanced academic courses and in an AVID elective class focused on writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization and study skills and includes regular tutorials with older students. AVID programs are coordinated by the non-profit AVID Center in San Diego, which supports and certifies AVID sites worldwide. The program was established in 1980, and by 2004 was operating in 1,800 schools in the United States and one school district in Canada (Chilliwack, B.C.). The project has allowed the program to expand to an additional 18 school sites in B.C.

Methodology

The Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) is conducting the evaluation of the BC AVID pilot project as a social experiment. Grade 8 student volunteers were randomly assigned to one of up to three experimental groups: a program group that receives the program, a comparison group or a waitlist group. Because program and comparison groups are similar in all other respects, differences in students’ experiences over time can be attributed to the impact of the program. A waitlist group was created – where sample numbers were sufficient – to enable any emerging vacancies in the class to be filled.

The BC AVID pilot project involves over 1,500 students in 18 schools. At 14 schools, students were recruited and randomly assigned to the experimental groups. Four schools were included as case study sites to help identify the challenges of implementing AVID at rural and remote schools. In all, roughly 900 students were assigned to receive AVID, 170 were placed on a waitlist for the program, and 450 were allocated to the comparison group.

The primary impact of interest is students’ enrolment in PSE and completion of their first year of studies. However, the project is also interested in determining the impact of AVID on high school course selection, attendance, and graduation as well as PSE program selection, program financing, student persistence, and program completion. In addition, BC AVID includes an implementation evaluation and a cost-benefit analysis.

Status

Two cohorts of students were recruited for BC AVID, the first in early 2005 and the second in 2006, when students were in Grade 8. Schools began delivery of the AVID program in Grade 9 (starting September 2005). The second cohort of students began Grade 9 AVID a year later. This means it will be possible to observe the first cohort’s PSE enrolment in 2010, and the second in 2011. In November 2008, SRDC published its first report on the project entitled, BC AVID Pilot Project: Early Implementation Report. This report documented the design and early implementation of the project. The interim impacts report was published in November 2010, and the final report was published in August 2014.

Funding

The BC AVID pilot project was funded by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation.

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The early years form the basis upon which children shape their place in the world. The environment in which a child grows up, at home and outside it, is crucial to their successful entry into school. Findings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth underline that:

• the knowledge and skills that children bring to school are strongly linked to academic achievement;
• children who have positive interactions with their parents, such as being read to daily, tend to score better than other children in their ability to communicate, to learn, and even to play in a cooperative manner;
• those who participate in organized sports and who take lessons in physical activities or the arts also show stronger abilities to learn.

In a linguistic minority context, the mastery of the language of instruction and the capacity to communicate are additional predictors of academic achievement. The reality of a minority context means that children are exposed to two different cultures at a time when their cultural identity and language skills are developing. Moreover, sooner or later these children must learn the language of the majority (i.e., English), in addition to their mother tongue, to ensure their full integration into society.

The required conditions to develop additive bilingualism (i.e., the mastery of a second language without incurring any costs to the cultural identity and mother tongue) are met by few Francophone children living in a minority context. For bilingualism to be additive, a minimal threshold of exposure to, or use of the mother tongue must be exceeded. For various reasons, the minimal threshold required is higher when the mother tongue is that of a linguistic minority.

The Readiness to Learn in Minority Francophone Communities project (formerly known as the Child Care Pilot Project) was a response to this reality. The project pilots a two-pronged preschool program whose innovation lies in its targeting of the two main environments — daycare and home — most likely to influence the learnings of young children, its emphasis on exposure to French in these environments, and its focus on providing high-quality content compliant with best practices in the areas of early childhood and family literacy.

This demonstration project was part of the Government of Canada’s 2003–2008 Action Plan for Official Languages and was continued under the 2008–2013 Roadmap for Canada’s Linguistic Duality. Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) retained the services of the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) to implement, manage, collect, and analyze the project data.

Results from the project add to the collective knowledge of what works for whom and will inform parents, service providers, and communities about the design and delivery of early childhood services targeting minority Francophone families. Early childhood also happens to be a favourable time for preventive, early, and positive interventions that may contribute to the preservation of the French identity, culture, and language as well as to the revitalization of minority Francophone communities.

Piloted program

The piloted preschool program combines a child care component with a family literacy component. The programming of the child care component was adapted for children aged 2 years and 8 months from the Franco-Saskatchewanian junior kindergarten program developed by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education (2001) for four-year-olds. The program uses a play-based approach to foster children’s development of French language skills, Francophone identity, and commitment towards the Francophone community. A set of 10 family literacy workshops offered to parents during the first year of program delivery complements the child care component. The programming of the family literacy component was developed specifically for the pilot project by the firm Eduk, in collaboration with ESDC and SRDC. The workshops sought to equip parents to support the development of their child’s French language skills and cultural identity.

The preschool program was implemented in six minority Francophone communities across Canada: Edmonton, Alberta; Cornwall, Durham, and Orléans, Ontario; as well as Edmundston and Saint-John, New Brunswick. More than 350 Francophone preschoolers (and their parents) were followed over a period of four years: from the age of three to seven — that is, from preschool to the start of Grade 2. Two cohorts were recruited into the project. Children of the first cohort were born in 2004 or in January 2005. Those of the second cohort were born in 2005. The preschool program was initiated in September 2007 for the first cohort and in September 2008 for the second cohort.

Methodology

In technical terms, the program was evaluated by way of a longitudinal study using a quasi-experimental design with comparison groups. Three groups of participants were created for the purposes of the study:

1. a Program Daycare group consisting of children enrolled in a French-language daycare that offers the new preschool program;
2. a Comparison Daycare group consisting of children enrolled in a French-language daycare not offering the new program; and
3. an Informal Care group consisting of children whose daytime care was provided at home or at an unregulated family daycare.
   Program evaluation

The program was evaluated by comparing the developmental trajectory of children participating in the preschool program with that of similar groups of children not participating in the program (i.e., Comparison Daycare group and Informal Care group children). The main developmental dimensions measured were language and cognitive skills (i.e., preliteracy, prenumeracy, and reading skills as well as various logical-mathematical aspects). The first assessment of children’s developmental dimensions (that is, at baseline) took place at the beginning of the preschool program. Thereafter, child assessments were done every four months over the first two years of the project for a total of seven assessments. In the last two years of the project, child assessments were done annually. Parents were surveyed in conjunction with child assessments.

To better distinguish the effects of the program, the impact analyses controlled for other factors known to influence school readiness and academic achievement. For example, the analyses controlled for the socio-demographic characteristics of children and their parents, family processes (e.g., parenting style), languages spoken in the home, social capital, and the cultural groups with which the parents identified.

Status

The Readiness to Learn project ended in 2013. Children are now enrolled in high school. In 2014, SRDC published the project reports. The Reference Report provides a description of participants of the first cohort at project onset in 2007. The Project Implementation Report documents implementation activities and evaluation findings arising from the program implementation study for the project’s first cohort. The First Cohort Findings Report presents program effects and impacts on children and their parents.

The Report of Findings from the Preschool Phase is the first to present findings for the combined first and second cohorts of participants. It provides a description of participants, results of the program implementation study, as well as program effects and impacts on children and parents. The Report of Program Effects in Grade 1 centers on program effects and impacts in the medium term on children and parents. Lastly, the Report of Program Effects in Grade 2 presents longer-term program effects and impacts on children and parents. Furthermore, the report casts a critical eye on the developmental trajectory of children and parenting aspects of interest over the four years of the project. This analysis allow us to take stock of successes and identify program aspects worthy of improvements with the end goal of increasing the effectiveness of the program in achieving the desired outcomes.

In 2016, SRDC published three project summaries consolidating results of the program implementation study, program impacts on children and their parents over the four years of the project as well as program effects on participating communities.

Funding

The Readiness to Learn in Minority Francophone Communities project was funded by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

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