An election campaign is generally an opportunity to take stock of the actions of the government in place. This is the exercise that analysts and columnists will engage in over the next few weeks. In education, if we ask teachers in the field their appreciation of the work of Minister Roberge, for many, he struggles to obtain a passing grade.
Many hopes had been placed in the member for Chambly who repeated at each interview having taught 17 years. We thought that finally, the ministry would be led by someone who knew education. It was the first disappointment. Reading his book What if we reinvented the school?, we could already understand that Mr. Roberge was a man of ideas but that these reflected a poor understanding of the entire complex administrative apparatus that constitutes the Quebec school system. His recent statements on evaluation related to the results of departmental reviews do not suggest that he even today understands some of the important workings.
Positive
Among the positive points that can be linked to Minister Roberge is obviously a certain recognition of the evaluation given by teachers. We can say today that the administrative apparatus respects more a mark attributed to a student by an education professional.
Another positive point is his constant discourse aimed at promoting the teaching profession. Even if the latter are often his worst critics, Mr. Roberge has never denigrated their work. It would even be allowed to believe that he was able to influence the government during the negotiations of the last employment contract where several of them were granted a real salary increase. It is however regrettable that, in fact, its action ended there,
Despite these positive elements, it is the lack of understanding of the real difficulties facing the Quebec school system that prevents us from asserting that Mr. Roberge was a minister who lived up to the hopes he himself raised. We see it with the current shortage of personnel in education. We also saw it with the pandemic that hit Quebec.
Questionable priorities
Thus, when we think of the various crises that we are currently experiencing, it is difficult to understand how the implementation of kindergartens at 4 years old, the overhaul of the ethics and religious culture (ECR) course and the transformation of school boards into centers of school services may have been his priorities. Instead of ensuring the proper functioning of the school system, Mr. Roberge preferred to work more to implement the political program of the CAQ.
Moreover, his leadership in the field failed to convince the teachers that he mastered the files for which he was responsible. We no longer count his improvisations, his absences, or the flamboyant announcements where he triumphantly claimed to have solved a problem only to find later that this was not the case. A recent example: on August 19, he claimed that the file concerning school transport was settled when in fact…
Worse still: the minister got entangled in less than convincing explanations for the ventilation of schools. Even today, we seem to forget that, on this point, we are still reduced to opening the classroom windows to ensure a minimum quality of the air we breathe there. In times of pandemic with a virus that is transmitted by aerosol, there is nothing to be proud of.
But because he has always been loyal to Mr. Legault, because he delivered the “political” goods that were expected of him, it should come as no surprise that he is reappointed to his post if he is re-elected.
In this respect, Mr. Roberge will have been a good soldier but a bad general.
Sylvain Dancause, Luc Papineau, Sylvain Bérubé and Mathieu Bernière, teachers