This process has left many of the over 20,000 new Toronto immigrants over the last 3 years with no ESL teacher to help.
Using even simple math tells everyone that 10,000 (half of the students) divided by 55 teachers equals 181 students per teacher.
Good ESL classes are a 10 student to 1 teacher ratio. A teacher can teach 60 students each day - seeing all 181 students every three days.
Just to put everything into some sort of perspective it takes the average student about 2000 hours of instruction and 3,000 hours of self-study and practice to become fluent in English.
The "new" TDSB ESL initiative means that the new immigrants will need about (lets see 210 school days each year divided by three equals 70 ESL classes each year) (Now we take the 2000 hours and divide by 70) yes just over 28.5 years of high school classes to become fluent in English.
In a recent Toronto Sun Article the Toronto board's superintendent of programs
Karen Grose is quoted "Every single English language learner across the system now has a teacher assigned to them"
What we say is so what - the students really need 500 hours each year.
Read the full article
http://www.torontosun.com/news/2009/01/18/8060621-sun.html
The article also begs the question - why does the Ontario Provincial Government not moniter how this specialty ESL grant is spent - and why did the TDSB ignore the real educational needs of their students.
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