Voices are multiplying to denounce the almost non-existent place occupied by education in the electoral campaign while the school network is struggling to recover from the pandemic.
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“It seems to me that when it’s a priority, we don’t wait three days before the vote to talk about it,” impatient Sylvain Martel, spokesperson for the Regroupement des committees de parents autonomes du Québec (RCPAQ).
For the past few days, many players in the community have been impatient to see subjects related to education so rarely percolate into the great general conversation of the election campaign.
A virtual press conference bringing together several management and parent associations will also take place on Friday.
No answer
At the end of August, the RCPAQ sent a series of questions to the five main provincial parties.
This is also what Catherine Harel Bourdon, mother of three and president of the Movement for a Modern and Open School (MEMO), who denounces in particular a system that discourages the involvement of parents and the community in schools. .
“They say it takes a village to educate a child. But where is the village? What role do we want to give it? “, she pictures.
Mme Harel Bourdon was one of the most visible figures in the world of education as president of the Montreal School Board, until the abolition of the democratic francophone school system in early 2020.
“It worries me and it questions me,” she says about the little place given to education.
To date, she has received concrete responses from the Liberal Party and Québec solidaire and acknowledgments of receipt from the CAQ and the Parti Québécois. Nothing from the Conservative Party.
Mr. Martel only received acknowledgments of receipt.
The newspaper contacted the parties to get their reaction. At the time of publication, only the Liberal Party and Quebec solidaire had responded. Both specified that the RCPAQ will soon receive its response.
“Makeup”
“We disagree with the statements of the organizations regarding the fact that education occupies an almost non-existent place,” said Alexandra Régis, of the PLQ’s communications team, by email.
Both parties mention that many commitments in education appear in their platform and that several announcements on the subject have already taken place.
But for Stéphane Vigneault, founder of the École ensemble movement, it is difficult to find an “inspiring project” through all this “tinkering”.
Just like the MEMO, the École ensemble movement would like the question of school segregation and the three-speed school to be addressed in the electoral campaign.
“It’s a bit ‘every school for itself'”, abounds Mme Harel Bourdon. “What’s the plan, beyond putting money in to hire staff or renovate outdated schools? »
École ensemble has also launched a campaign on the web to encourage the organizers of the leaders’ debates that will take place in the coming weeks to include questions on education.
“Education is the second most important budget item of the Quebec state,” recalls Mr. Vigneault.
Emergency state
Meanwhile, principals are worried about the scale of the work that awaits the system to recover from the pandemic, with staff shortages and dropouts likely to rise.
“Is the government aware of the difficulties we are encountering? I think not. I think that the state of emergency in which we find ourselves on a daily basis is not completely understood, ”worries Kathleen Legault, president of the Montreal Association of School Principals.