MONTREAL - School is back and for some students at Carlyle and Michelangelo schools, that means learning in a radically different manner.

The schools have become the EMSB's first elementary schools to offer the International Baccalaureate Programme (IB).

The IB program has gained popularity among parents for offering a perspective of internationalism to a school community.

"It's a great program," EMSB Chair Angela Mancini told CTV Montreal. "It's the type of program that we like to see our schools go into, in that it gives our parents choosing to come to the Montreal school board a greater variety of choices of programs that may fit their particular needs," she said.

The board already offers the IB program at three high schools: Marymount Academy in NDG and John Paul I and Laurier Macdonald in St-Leonard.

With Carlyle and Michelangelo there are now 258 schools in Canada with IB programs, a system of learning first introduced in 1968.

It takes up to five years for a school to be accredited to teach the IB program and now that those obstacles have been overcome, the board is excited to get going.

"This is more than just a content-oriented program, it deals with concepts and it is a constructivist approach to learning. Students learn the skills to become good lifelong learners, as well as responsible citizens understanding local and global issues," said Michelangelo Principal Anna Della Rocca in a written statement.

And while the EMSB is thrilled with its entry intro elementary IB, the winter might be less cheerful as 11 board schools face the axe due to board enrolment which has been declining by 500 to 800 a year as some parents have opted to send their kids to private school or French schools.

Those difficult decisions will be made in January and the board welcomes feedback from groups or individual until that time.

Mancini says that it has taken a lot of work to dissuade parents of the misapprehension that EMSB students are not learning French fluently.

"Our French immersion programs have become better and stronger quality and they produced completely bilingual students, with the added choice of having the English education," said Mancini.