Posted at 12:00
Stop embellishing reality
How many teachers will be missing at the beginning of the school year? No class will be left without a teacher, Education Minister Jean-François Roberge hammered in August. However, there are still around 100 full-time positions to fill in Quebec schools. What was the performance of the students in the last ministry exams? Four months after testing, we still don’t know. The future minister will be able to demonstrate greater transparency, ask the school service centers to report more quickly and shake the cage of the mega-department of education.
As for parents and students, who sometimes come up against the opacity of school service centers when they want to report a situation deemed unjust, they will be able to count on the establishment of a uniform system for handling complaints in 2023. The mandate of the new National Student Ombudsman will be closely monitored.
Attract and retain teachers in these times of shortage
Today those who have already graduated (in a field other than teaching) and decide to become a teacher must enter two years of master’s degree. Why not go back to the teaching certificate in use until 1995? This may be all the more sufficient as mentoring by experienced teachers is already in place in several places and could be extended. It is necessary to avoid at all costs that new teachers leave little manned in a rush, just as it is necessary to avoid early departures at the time of retirement of teachers to whom some school service centers categorically refuse any reduction in the workload. Can daytime educators help the teacher who has a particularly difficult cohort in a given year? A school in Bécancour is testing this. Such ideas should be explored to see if they should be replicated elsewhere.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE With children, the expertise of specialists is urgently needed to help them concretely. 
Serve the student, not the bureaucracy
Psychologists, psychoeducers, speech therapists and remedial teachers in schools have complained for years of wasting a lot of time in “classifying” students and being drowned in the forms to be filled in. Jean-François Roberge, who was Minister of Education, agrees that we should put an end to all this bureaucracy, the signal has already been given in this direction, parents and teachers are asking for it with all their wishes. With children, the expertise of specialists is urgently needed to help them concretely.
Accelerate school renewal
Six out of ten schools are in poor condition and too many children learn in dilapidated places, sometimes without natural light, where many adults would refuse to spend their days. COVID-19 brought to light school ventilation problems, but long ago the factories had to shut down urgently due to decay or mold. During the election campaign, the Coalition avenir Québec promised to add $ 2 billion to the $ 7 billion in investments already planned in the latest budget for the next four years. This commitment must be respected.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE School under construction, in LaSalle, last April
Finish school at three speeds
Only 15% of students in regular high school programs go to university, a study conducted in 2019 by researcher Pierre Canisius Kamanzy of the University of Montreal established. If they attend a selective program at a public school, the rate rises to 51%. As for young people in private secondary schools, they attend a share of 60%.
The funding of private schools is widely questioned, inter alia by the École Ensemble movement. The skimming starts early: in primary school, public schools give exams to students who want to participate in an international or music program, for example. The regular programs of public schools are thus devalued and the advantages of a neighborhood school in which everyone compares themselves disappear.
Addressing difficulties in French in advance
At the end of secondary school, 90% of students pass the Ministry exam in French. Why do CEGEPs have to multiply French assistance centers and universities, extra courses? How to explain that prospective teachers themselves fail so massively in their mandatory French certification test?
The Minister of Higher Education, Danielle McCann, acknowledged this in 2021: the results of the uniform French test that students must pass at the end of their university career “are not as good” as one would like.
From time to time, teachers also denounce the fact that the assessment criteria for ministry exams in French are steadily decreasing.
The mastery of French – reading, spelling and enriching the vocabulary – must have higher priority.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE Training of auxiliary nurses
Direct students to the right program
At CEGEP, the graduation rate has not exceeded 65% in recent years. Meanwhile, DEPs – professional degrees leading to a profession as a plumber, welder, or nursing assistant, for example – are not widely used. Shouldn’t we encourage a little more enrollment in these programs and promote them more?
Although a blunt is deplorable in French, the bar is often very high in mathematics, where Quebec is a champion in both Canada and industrialized countries. Is strong math really required in all of these CEGEP programs that require it?
Improve childcare services
Some students spend nearly four hours a day in overcrowded daycare centers that often offer nothing more than babysitting services. On the contrary, early childhood centers offer a real educational program which, logically, should find its extension in school nurseries. However, the positions of educators – precarious, with shortened hours and too few to have a decent salary – are very unattractive. As a result, the groups are overflowing and the shortages are so intense that some schools have asked parents to deregister their children from daycare centers. Childcare workers and trade unions are eager to be more involved in school projects and could be much better involved.
