L’aménagement linguistique en milieu scolaire francophone minoritaire en Ontario et l’accès aux études postsecondaires: interprétations et retombées

Abstract

This article casts a critical look at one particular moment of Francoontarian youth’s academic life that has heretofore been absent from academic study—the transition from secondary school to postsecondary education. Analysis of results from three studies on the direct access to postsecondary education by graduates of Ontario’s French first-language secondary schools, in light of North American research on access to postsecondary education, leads us to two conclusions. Guidance counselors’ narrow interpretation of the Politique d’aménagement policy (PAL) (Ministère de l’Éducation de l’Ontario, 2004a, 2004b) may potentially limit the realisation of the full linguistic vitality of Ontario’s francophone community. This same narrow interpretation of the PAL, which focuses only on francophones accessing bilingual and francophone postsecondary institutions, cannot reduce or eliminate the under-representation of Ontario francophones in postsecondary education (Rae, 2005), since it does not take into account the impact of distance on access to postsecondary education (Frenette, 2002, 2003; Labrie, Lamoureux et Wilson, 2009; Lamoureux, 2007a).