Posted at 12:00 p.m.
In order to benefit fully from the opportunities offered by globalization, new information and communication technologies and the internationalization of cultures, countries and regions must effectively develop their human capital. Education, learning and continuing training, as well as the skills and degree of employability of workers, are an integral part of the process of developing human capital, a key factor for growth and well-being.
During the election campaign in Quebec, questions were once again raised about the role and performance of private, public schools with selection and so-called ordinary public schools. The figures put forward would show, among other things, that: “Among the pupils who attend the ordinary public in secondary school, barely 15% will go to university. For the public with selection, the rate is 51%. And for the private sector, it’s 60%.1 »
The governance of our education system, based on centralized State-union co-management and undermined by endemic conflicts of interest where the designer and service provider and the performance evaluator come under fundamentally the same authority, seems difficult to respond appropriate to the needs and interests of the students. Not for lack of competence, but for lack of intensity of incentives.
The school system thus suffers from ill-conceived governance leading to a significant waste of resources. All entangled in a left-right dichotomy, an aged and outdated concept.
The solution should be obvious: we must ABOLISH public schools as we know them today.
In a genuine social democracy, the setting of performance targets must be the fundamental responsibility of the state, while the provision of education and continuing training services must be the responsibility of companies and organizations in the competitive sector, encouraged and decentralized to achieve the objectives set by the State. The keywords of the necessary reform are obligation of results and performance, competition, modularity and experimentation with best practices.
The student at the center of the debate
Putting the student back at the center of the debate will reaffirm the essential role that teachers, parents, doctors, psychologists and other support personnel play in training and education. By setting up competition and incentive mechanisms, we will reaffirm the nobility of the diversified teaching profession. Good, well-motivated teachers who teach or will want to teach in our schools will benefit from this organizational revolution. Less efficient teachers will necessarily leave the system and move on to other professions.
The responsibilities of the government sector are first to determine the skill thresholds that students will have to achieve at the various stages of their training and then to manage the performance contracts entered into with all the competitive companies involved in the education system.
Only competency goals need to be set. The methods used to achieve these objectives will be defined in the tenders of companies and organizations in the competitive sector, in order to ensure an adequate level of modularity and experimentation in the search for best practices.
The bidding process will be conducted in a clear and transparent manner to promote the development of competition between companies in the education sector.
We can identify six main agents or actors in the education system: the students, the government sector, the competitive suppliers of education services, the competitive suppliers of ancillary goods and services (canteens, day care centres, leisure activities, maintenance and modernization of schools and equipment), the integrator managers responsible for managing the cross-responsibilities of the two previous groups of actors, and the competing providers of performance evaluation procedures and methodologies.
The last four actors will only act within the framework of incentive contracts (contractual payments according to the achievement of objectives) signed with the governmental sector (municipal, regional or national) with the explicit objective of satisfying the needs of the main stakeholders. , students.
This would get rid of public schools as we know them today in favor of a school system where competitive sector organizations (private companies, cooperatives, non-profit organizations, social economy organizations, community workers’ organizations, etc.) will have to demonstrate their competence and will compete to obtain contracts for educational services.
We would move from a system of low-accountability, low-return public schools to a system of competitive, high-level schools that are publicly funded and framed by time-limited, incentive-based contracts. The government sector would thus remain primarily responsible for the quality of the education system.
The main benefits of this new governance are numerous. The level of supervision and support for academic success will no longer be identical in all schools. In order to support pupils from underprivileged backgrounds, companies in the competitive sector, constrained by the obligation of results, will offer services which, according to the specific needs of the pupils, will integrate staff, teachers and others, who are more qualified and, therefore, better paid. Competitive mechanisms will naturally take this reality into account. This will ensure through competitive processes true equality of opportunity for all students.