The Portage Rotary Club recently heard from Portage school division Superintendent Todd Cuddington, who related part of his background in international education. Cuddington says more than a decade ago the provincial government initiated partnerships around the world through affiliated overseas schools. Cuddington notes they reached out to interested parties in Turkey, Egypt and the Far East to offer a Manitoba curriculum to international students, adding the idea is that those students will graduate with a national curriculum in their host country plus a Canadian diploma as well. He says this process then makes it easier for these young people to transition to Manitoba institutions in post-secondary. Cuddington notes of his first cohort of fifteen students who graduated with the dual diploma, almost all of them wound up studying in North America and the majority of those were in eastern Canada.

He adds they worked very closely with River East Transcona school division in Winnipeg to give the students a truly Canadian experience. Cuddington says in February when their school in Turkey was on winter break, the pupils came to Manitoba to attend school in Winnipeg and follow the same curriculum they were learning at home. He notes they delivered the same coursework that a kid here in Portage would receive, so it was very authentic and all the necessary supporting resources and materials were shipped in. Cuddington adds it was a great opportunity for him as leader and certainly for the kids as well.

He says many of the children in his cohort of students had parents who were already on an investor visa track, noting they wanted to get their kids involved in a Canadian education while living in their home country. Cuddington says the idea was that they were ultimately going to move to Canada as a landed resident and then work toward citizenship, adding this program helped them get started on that track before they even left home so it really worked out in their favour. He notes a number of those families have indeed become Canadian residents.