The Edmonton Public School system is planning to develop a new program to assist immigrant children with integrating into school, a way to ease them into their new formal environments. Starting as a pilot program, the CBC reports that school board trustees are already considering expanding the program into its own school for immigrant and refugee children. Joseph Luri of the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers in Edmonton welcomes the idea. He wants to see a separate school for immigrant/refugee children with the children grouped not by age but by their knowledge:
“Some have been in the refugee camps for 10 years … never gone to any formal school but now coming here and they begin learning English as a teenager, you don’t get it”.