Photo: Martin C. Barry • NEWSFIRST
From the left, QESBA executive-director David Birnbaum, QESBA president Debbie orrocks,
Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board chairman Steve Bletas and filmmaker Annakin Slayd who
produced the Go Publique video.

Using an original song and video created by a former Laval Western High School student, the Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA) launched the second phase of a campaign last Monday to encourage the province’s anglophone parents to think seriously about educating their children in the province’s public school system.

Hopefully viral
The Go Publique video made by actor/producer Annakin Slayd is initially being distributed on one of the world’s currently most popular mediums — YouTube. It is also linked to the official Go Publique web site, www.gopublique.ca, and it is being made widely available through two equally popular Internet social media — Facebook and Twitter. Global Television will also be airing a 30-second version of the video in coming weeks.
Screened for journalists during a press conference held on Jan. 24, the video’s key message is that Quebec’s 340 English elementary and high schools, as well as its adult and vocational centres, “are the right choice for English-eligible students and their parents who hope to build their bilingual futures here in Quebec,” the QESBA said in a statement.

Sharing the message
“It is our job to make sure this message is shared and understood,” said QESBA president Debbie Horrocks. She was joined by Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board chairman Steve Bletas, who chaired the QESBA communications committee which is coordinating the campaign. The campaign has the support of all nine of Quebec’s English school boards.
Horrocks said that while the QESBA is fully aware that parents have choices and “there are private schools available” and “there are French schools available,” the association wants to give parents with English school eligibility every opportunity to consider an English public school in Quebec. “It is our job to give them that opportunity, and that is what this campaign is all about.”

Already on target
According to Horrocks, Quebec English public school students today are graduating on average at the 80 per cent rate established by the provincial government as the target for the year 2020. “They are graduating with the superior bilingual skills that will be so essential to their future in Quebec.” Many, in fact, are scoring in the top percentiles on French mother-tongue exams, she added. “They are benefitting from an English school system that values the role of parents and the community.”

Bletas said the campaign “is the fruit of weeks of work, aimed at catching the spirit, the talent, the promise and the quality of our schools, our students, teachers, professionals and support staff. We wanted to find a way to do so that would best capture the interest of young parents looking for a school for their children.

Built around video
“We also wanted to use this opportunity to express and reinforce the pride of the current students, employees and commissioners who are already part of the English public school system. The choice we made was to build this campaign around a music video … and if everything goes as planned, it’s about to go viral.”

The video’s32-year-old creator is a successful actor and sometime filmmaker, who was most recently in the yet-to-be-released feature film The Factory which stars John Cusack. About a decade ago, Annakin Slayd appeared in a TV show called Are You Afraid of the Dark, which has since developed somewhat of a cult following. And he just finished writing and starring in a new movie, which has the distinction of being the first full-length feature film completely shot on an iPhone 4.