Expertise given,not sold.
ISPEC puts first-rate educational, administrative and clinical expertise at the service of communities that cannot buy it — free of charge, without public funding, and without ideological condition.
No one folds an umbrella to put it under a bed; it is held up high, and it gives shelter to all those caught in the storm.
after Matthew 5:15
An institute that gives its expertise away instead of selling it
ISPEC is neither a school, nor an NGO, nor a company. It is an institute of volunteers — a body of professionals who give their practice away. It asks for and accepts no monetary funding, from any government or any foundation.
Free, except the paper
Teaching is given. Only photocopies and materials are charged back at exact cost — CAD 5.80 per tutoring hour (2026) — and waived on request.
Without funding
No cheque, no grant, no backer. What circulates here is time, knowledge and premises — never money.
Without condition
No one has to profess a belief, an opinion or an allegiance to receive ISPEC's help. The umbrella opens for everyone caught in the storm.
A lineage, not a fiction
Foundation of the Institut Supérieur de Promotion de l'Enseignement Catholique, which for thirty-four years trained the administrative and pedagogical leadership of French Catholic education.
The institute closes. What remains is an archive, a court judgment, and a book published in 2011: Le défi de l'ISPEC.
The work begins again without a structure: alumni of the Angers institute lend their support to several bodies, informally and without a legal identity.
The founding documents are settled: statutes, structure and canonical frame, studied and completed by jurists and ecclesiastics. The institute is not yet legally constituted.
The acronym is taken up and the vocation continues under a new name: the Higher Institute for the Promotion of Canadian Education.
What we do not claim
ISPEC 2024 is neither a continuation, a merger, nor an affiliate of the Angers institute. It is a new organisation, in another country, with a broader mandate and no legal, financial or canonical link to the original.
We say so because an institute's credibility rests on the precision of what it asserts — and of what it declines to assert.
The Umbrella
A moral vision wide enough to shelter the deep commitments of a plural society — without erasing any of them.
"No one folds an umbrella to put it under a bed; it is held up high, and it gives shelter to all those caught in the storm."
— after Matthew 5:15
The Umbrella starts from a conviction: every person is made in the image of God, truth is one, and the common good is the measure of a just community. From that root flow the dignity of the person, solidarity and subsidiarity, the harmony of faith and reason, and the preferential option for the poor.
These are not Catholic values reserved for Catholics. They form a canopy — wide enough to shelter Indigenous perspectives, the First Peoples Principles of Learning, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the civic virtues of a pluralist democracy.
The umbrella is not a melting pot: each tradition keeps its integrity and enters into mutual enrichment. And it must be written — in course outlines, units, assessments. What is not planned is not taught.
Two levels of naming.
The Umbrella is the name of the doctrine, and it belongs to no nation.
Canadian Values is the name of its articulation in British Columbia.
Lebanon, Syria and Egypt write theirs, in Arabic, under the name their own authors choose.
An umbrella accepted only on condition that you accept its name is no longer an umbrella: it is a roof.
Ten domains, one conviction
A domain enters this list only where we can show the work already done — not the intention, not the project. The first three are our identity; the other seven are what must be done for them to hold.
Tutoring
French, DELF/DALF, TEF Canada, and support across every subject of the British Columbia curriculum, from primary to secondary.
Education
Curriculum, assessment, teacher formation and school development. The BC framework and the pedagogical synthesis are its instruments.
Intercultural exchange
The movement of people, languages and practice between communities and countries. The Vancouver ↔ Harissa axis is its first line.
Interreligious dialogue
Shared study and structured encounter between religious communities. Without proselytism from any side — including our own.
Administration and governance
Boards, records, policy, inspection-readiness, and the formation of institutional leaders.
Accounting and stewardship
Chart of accounts, journals, ledgers, cash and bank books, per-currency reporting, fiscal years — and the rescue of legacy systems.
Digital systems
Designing, hosting and maintaining the systems by which an institution actually keeps its affairs. Accessibility, traceability, audit.
Health, medicine and care
Health literacy, prevention, referral and training of local carers — community clinical services and residential care for older persons.
Support to centres
Resources, libraries, tutoring cohorts, formation sessions and coordination between sites.
Research, publishing and open courses
Articles, and complete courses for primary and secondary schools and colleges — in several languages, free to registered institutions.
Four countries, twenty-three sites
Schools, nurseries, centres, a community clinic and a senior care facility. This is where the work actually happens.
Canada — British Columbia
Seat- Head office and development base
- Languages & tutoring
- Formation
- Digital systems
Lebanon
Reference deployment- 2 schools
- 8 centres
- 2 nurseries
- 1 community clinic
Syria
Active- 1 school
- 4 centres
- 1 nursery
- 1 senior care facility
Egypt
Active- 2 schools
- 1 centre
Schematic representation — not to scale, not cartographic.
Eight threads, one trade
Each thread is a way of delivering the ten domains — never an isolated activity.
A. Languages and academic support
The French Department: DELF/DALF, TEF Canada, tutoring at all levels, online and in person.
B. Formation of educators
Pedagogical synthesis, active learning, universal design, formation of formators.
C. Administrative strengthening
Governance, records, policy, stewardship, inspection-readiness.
D. Health, medicine and care
Three distinct levels: health education, clinical services, residential care — each with its own obligations.
E. Support to centres
Resources, libraries, cohorts, coordination between sites.
F. Interreligious and intercultural dialogue
Shared study, cross-community formation, joint service, documentation — between religious traditions and between cultures, under five strict rules.
G. Administration through software
Four systems in service: portal, school management, centre accounting, nurseries.
H. Research and open courses
Articles, teaching units and courses, free to registered institutions.
We write, and we give our courses away
An institute that only practises is a school. One that also writes is an institute. One that gives its courses away does what it says.
Articles and frameworks
- The Umbrella — how Catholic values hold Canadian society together read the article ↗
- Catholic Education for Tomorrow — pedagogical synthesis, technology as environment read the article ↗
- The BC assessment framework — Know–Do–Understand, six competencies view the framework ↗
- The article series — the 2015 congress, tradition and innovation
Courses and units published
The complete Grade 8 social studies series, each unit mapped to the British Columbia Big Ideas and competencies, the canopy written into the unit rather than appended to it:
- The Fall of Rome and the rise of Christendom
- The Crusades and the call to peace
- The Renaissance: rebirth and revelation
- European explorations and the dignity of peoples
- Medieval law, Magna Carta and the origin of rights
- The Black Death and the works of mercy watch the film
- Reformation, rebellion, renewal and reason
Free to registered institutions
All our courses are free — to primary and secondary schools and to colleges that have registered with ISPEC and received our written confirmation.
Five conditions, and nothing more:
- 1 · Free, with no fee and no subscription.
- 2 · Attribution to ISPEC, with title and edition.
- 3 · No sale, no sub-licence to a third party.
- 4 · The canopy is neither removed nor renamed.
- 5 · A revised edition replaces the old one.
Fourteen French courses for adult anglophones
Not one book, and not two: a collection. Fourteen everyday situations, each written as its own method running from A1.1 to C1 — and each delivered in five documents, so a learner, a class, a teacher, an answer booklet and an audio pack are all served.
- Fourteen subjects, one method. Au restaurant, la santé, la famille, l'emploi, le logement, les voyages… each a complete course, not a chapter.
- Six levels inside each title. The same scene told six times — « Une table pour deux, s'il vous plaît » at A1.1, a full restaurant review at C1.
- Bilingual from the first page. Every word glossed in English, every pronunciation given in IPA.
- Teacher-ready. Six lesson plans per title, complete answer booklets, a skills assessment grid, detachable worksheets.
- Protected. The browser edition locks copying, printing and export; the answer keys never reach the student edition.
No answer key. Printed and handed out.
Same pages, projected.
Answer keys and lesson plans.
The answer booklet, on its own.
The listening pack.
Page of the book
What you will learn
The complete table of contents: six chapters, five annexes, the whole journey at a glance.
Page of the book
How to use this book
Four steps for the learner, the ninety-minute lesson for the teacher, the legend of the icons.
The fourteen titles
- Au Restaurantordering, booking, reviewing
- La Santéfood, exercise, prevention
- La Familledescribing people, relationships
- Les Activitéshobbies, sport, weekends
- Acheter des vêtementssizes, colours, returns
- En Classeinstructions, asking for help
- L'EmploiCV, interviews, workplace
- Le Logementrenting, describing a home
- Les Animauxpets, habits, the vet
- Les Métierstrades, professions
- Les Voituresdriving, repairs, insurance
- Les Voyagesstations, hotels, tickets
- Médecineconsultations, symptoms
- Supermarchéquantities, aisles, paying
The systems by which a congregation keeps its affairs
ISPEC does not advise institutions and then leave them with advice: it builds, hosts and maintains the systems. Administration, accounting and records are the work; the software is how it is done.
Portal
Bilingual EN/AR entry point, true RTL, holding the applications together without merging them.
School management
Families, students, fees and discounts, marks, report cards, payroll with CNSS deductions, budget, certificates.
Centres & accounting
Journal, ledger, cash and banks, per-bank statements, a permissions matrix of centres × users. Arabic-native.
Nurseries
Two sites, children, attendance, invoices, expenses, pedagogy, health notes.
Country by country. No application is exported unchanged. Each is tuned and modified to align with the laws and policies of the country in which the works are carried out — payroll and social-insurance rules, fiscal and reporting obligations, and the language of the administration.
Screenshot
The applications portal
The portal, as it runs today — three applications in service, one doorway, each keeping its own address and its own language.
Rescuing legacy systems
The legacy estate was not one accounting file. The congregation's desktop databases, spreadsheets, stand-alone applications and ad-hoc tools — Visual FoxPro 9, Dbase, MS Access, Paradox and others — were migrated to modern web applications: accounting, school management, nurseries and the portal. Accounting kept its chart of accounts, journal structure, currencies and the 1 July–30 June fiscal year; the other three follow the same rule — one record, server-side permissions, an audit trail.
This is the 1972 mandate executed with other instruments: nothing is abstract in "raising administration to the highest standards" when a 1990s desktop database becomes a multi-user system with an audit trail — and when every application in the house follows the same rule.
The audit rule
No system goes live in ISPEC's name without an independent audit, and no correction is accepted without a re-measurement.
This is a practice, not an intention: the portal was audited at five viewport widths with programmatic overflow measurement, corrected, then re-audited — which confirmed a 70% weight reduction and revealed a regression introduced by the corrections themselves.
A process that audits only once is a process that reports its own intentions.
French Department
High-quality French courses, preparation for the official examinations, and personalised tutoring in every subject of the British Columbia curriculum — for primary and secondary students.
- DELF / DALF — complete preparation, from A1 to C2
- TEF Canada — immigration and citizenship
- School tutoring — primary (K-7) and secondary (8-12)
- General French — conversation, business, grammar
Teaching is given. Only materials are charged back at exact cost: CAD 5.80 per hour, waived on request.
An institute held by volunteers
Two authorities, deliberately separated: the doctrine on one side, the works on the other.
ISPEC is an institute of volunteers: no member receives a salary, fee or profit. Contributions are in kind — time, expertise, a room, a device. No cheque is accepted, including from a government.
Your institution is welcome under the umbrella
Free courses, formation, systems and support: write to us — every request receives a written answer within seven days.
A question, a request for access, a proposal
Institutions wishing to use our courses, educators wishing to contribute, partners: write to us. Every request for access receives an answer within seven days.
Open the map full screen ↗ · © OpenStreetMap
Privacy
What is never recorded
- Your name, your email address or your telephone number — unless you write to us.
- Your full IP address. It is truncated before any use, and the truncated form is not kept either.
- Anything that would allow us to identify you personally, or to follow you from one site to another.
Measurements are kept for a limited period, then deleted automatically. They stay on the server of our hosting provider in Canada. The page loads its typefaces from Google Fonts and embeds an OpenStreetMap frame; those two services receive your IP address when they load. No advertising network is involved, and we set no cookie of our own.
The message you send through the contact form is used only to answer you. It is neither sold nor transmitted to a third party.
