A Calgary mother is upset her daughter was automatically enrolled in an English-as-a-second-language class, even though the child is fluent and doesn't speak any other languages.

The nine-year-old Grade 4 student was born in India, but educated in Canada. The family recently moved to Calgary from Winnipeg.

When school began in her new city, the child discovered she was enrolled in the weekly half-hour ESL class without her family's knowledge.

The class made the girl doubt her own abilities, said the mother. "I didn't want her to feel that way; she's a part of the society and she speaks in English so well."

School board responds

Ted Flitton, spokesman for the Calgary Board of Education, apologized for what he called "an oversight."

The teacher had to make a judgment call because the board hadn't received the child's records from her school in Winnipeg, nor had anyone met with her parents, he said.

"We saw that she was born in India, so that's an indication that maybe there is an ESL need there," he said.

"We weren't getting all the information as quickly as we would have liked, so we had to make a decision based on what we knew."

The child was pulled from the class after her mother met with her teacher.

Teachers and administrators should have a better understanding of the ESL program and make sure a student really needs the class before being automatically enrolled, said the mother.