A pilot project for teaching assistants will be implemented in about 100 elementary schools starting in September. Support staff, including educators in school daycare, will lend a hand to teachers and students.
This measure and others announced Tuesday morning aim to enhance the work of school staff, in the midst of a shortage of teachers and all other categories of employees.
This program “will help us meet the biggest challenge we have in the school system at the moment, that of the labor shortage,” said the Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, during a visit to a school in the Quebec region.
At the end of a two-year pilot project, the government wishes to “deploy the class assistance project in all primary schools in Quebec”.
Mixed reactions
The Federation of School Support Staff (FPSS-CSQ), which for years has been calling for a boost to promote its members, is delighted with the Minister’s announcement. “By creating classroom support positions, the government is not only meeting the needs of teachers and students, but it is also giving support staff the chance to put their expertise and qualifications to good use. All while allowing these workers to have positions with a more interesting number of hours, ”reacted the union.
For its part, the Montreal Association of School Principals (AMDES) gave a lukewarm reception to this announcement. “It does not address the heart of the problem: there is an urgent need to act to improve the working conditions of school staff,” says Kathleen Legault, president of AMDES.
The salary increases granted to teachers do not on their own compensate for the difficulties experienced in the classes, she specifies.
School principals are themselves engaged in a showdown with the Legault government to improve their working conditions. The hiring of thousands of non-legally qualified teachers, because of the shortage, increases the task of the other members of the team, who must train these new teachers, underlines the representative of the school management.
“Education is supposedly the government’s top priority, but we don’t really have the impression that teachers are more valued than four years ago,” reacted Kathleen Legault.
Classroom aids are already provided in 4-year-old kindergartens, but some schools have difficulty finding the staff to come and lend a hand to teachers, according to Ms. Legault.
Further details will follow.