The Québec Ombudsman’s special report on services — or the lack of services — for students in difficulty adds a heavy stone to our rickety edifice of public services in disarray, due to a lack of resources and efficient organization. Here we have in our primary schools small “emergencies”, like in the hospital: we do the triage there, we distribute difficulty codes, we hope to have the resources in good time and, if necessary, we watch, sorry and helpless, the initially mild cases worsen before our eyes.
There is nothing very surprising in this special report which looked at services for students in difficulty in elementary schools and which concluded bluntly: not enough services, often provided after interminable delays, and according to a funding model that does not serve the cause. For almost twenty years now, the education network has been struggling to find ways to optimize the big catch-all of special education, which includes all the recipes deployed to allow students to evolve in an ordinary class despite their particular challenges, thanks to specialized resources. But since the adoption of the Policy on Special Education by the Ministry of Education in 1999, the song of the lack of resources and the limits of adaptation has not ceased to resonate.
Nothing surprising, then, but the absence of surprise nevertheless makes it a most distressing account. The survey, conducted just before the pandemic and which only looks at the primary network, concludes neither more nor less that the Ministry of Education is flouting its own laws and policies by failing to offer children who need it. need a service to which they are entitled. The Education Act guarantees students access to complementary services, which includes all the services that a student in difficulty is entitled to expect — and we add: when he needs them! These services vary from remedial education to psychology, including speech therapy, psychoeducation or special education.
However, the services, if they arrive, take so long that they miss their initial target, which is to support a child to prevent him from experiencing school failure. The Protector’s examination even allows us to understand that for lack of resources, schools are reduced to acting only when the child is failing, which challenges in a masterful way any policy of prevention and early action, principles which nevertheless guide all actions in education.
If the Québec Ombudsman dwells on this crucial question, it is because students with special needs do not account for a negligible portion of the school population. In 2019-20, this group accounted for 18.2% of all elementary school children. Of this percentage, a quarter are said to be handicapped, and three quarters have adjustment and learning difficulties.
Parents whose child presents particular challenges at school face a veritable obstacle course to hope to have access to services: many parents interviewed for the purposes of this survey stated that they had waited more than eight months to have access to the only assessment of their child’s needs, and eight additional months afterwards to have access to a few hours of services here and there. That’s the equivalent of… two school years! Many parents also have recourse to expensive private services — sometimes even at the suggestion of the school, overwhelmed by events — and sometimes it is only to be subsequently rejected by public school professionals, who do not recognize not the conclusions of privately commissioned experts.
Furthermore, since the system continues to award a portion of funding based on “codes” given to certain groups of children for funding that is reserved for them, the school – and even the parents – have grown accustomed to depending a diagnosis, then a code, to hope for a budget. This is totally contrary to the spirit of the special education policies in place and, above all, harmful to children.
What to do ? The labor shortage is of course at the center of this report, which trumpets the lack of resources. But this single argument can no longer be used to explain all the shortcomings. Among the most relevant recommendations, we retain the complete review of the funding of services for students in difficulty, centered around a minimum threshold of services, regardless of the school. Improved tracking of vacancies is also suggested, as visual navigation completely detracts from effective planning. Finally, the Protector asks the Department to provide an implementation plan for each of the 11 proposed actions by the next school year. We look forward to seeing the results of this crucial project.