Ministry Examinations | Homeschoolers perform less well

Quebec students who are homeschooled, forced for the first time in June 2022 to take the Ministry’s end-of-year exams, obtained results generally lower than those of students who attend school, particularly in math. But the relatively small gap reassures experts and parents consulted by The Press.

Tristan Peloquin

Investigative team, La Presse

These unpublished data, which show an average gap as small as 2.4% in reading for students in 6^e grade, and up to 11.3% in mathematical reasoning for students in the same age group, stem from a series of Freedom of Information requests made by The Press with four different school service centers in Montreal and its region.

Quebec has 7,892 children who are exempted from their obligation to attend school because they receive education at home. The Legault government, saying it wants to “ensure the same chances of success and graduation” for all, has for the first time forced all these children, who are 4^e and 6^e year, as well as 2^e secondary, to pass the compulsory tests of the Ministry last June.

This regulatory change is fiercely contested by the Quebec Association for Home Education (AQED), which is suing the government with lawyer Anne-France Goldwater to have it invalidated.

AQED and its 1,800 member families (representing 4,000 homeschooled children) claim that approximately half of children who are homeschooled have been removed from the school system because they have learning disabilities that l school fails to provide adequate support.

Forcing them to undergo end-of-year exams is “even more anxiety-inducing” for them because it forces some children to “reconnect with the place that traumatized them” and “confronts them with circumstances separate from their usual educational experience”. , argues the organization in its legal action. Many parents have also complained that school service centers (CSS) have not given them access to the educational resources needed to prepare their children for the tests.

Different deviations from one CSS to another

However, the data collected by The Press suggest that the apprehended catastrophe did not take place. While grades are on average lower for home-schooled students, in some exceptional cases they performed slightly better than students in the regular curriculum. This is particularly the case for the reading and writing exams of 6^e year at the CSS de la Pointe-de-l’Île, as well as in mathematical problem solving at the CSS Marguerite-Bourgeoys.

At the English-Montreal Anglophone School Board, only the Grade 6 math exam^e year was mandatory under the regulations. The 29 home-schooled students achieved a higher average score in the math reasoning test (74%) than their school peers (70.5%). The results were almost identical to the mathematical problem solving test (70% against 71.8% at school).

“Wow! For children who have never taken exams at school, to see that they achieve similar results [à ceux du cursus ordinaire]it’s a nice surprise,” exclaims Arianne Guay, a mother whose two homeschooled boys had to undergo compulsory exams in 6^e year and in 2^e secondary, last June.

Her two children had a “good level” of support from the Marguerite-Bourgeoys school service center in their preparation before the exams, assures Ms.^me Guy. “We had meetings with the CSS people for each exam. The children were able to watch previous exams and prepare well for the questions, she explains. But we also put the package at home. We retained the services of a remedial teacher, and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. I didn’t want my guys to fail miserably,” the mother explains.

At the CSS de Laval, an opposite phenomenon occurred: in the mathematical reasoning exam of 6^e grade, the average for homeschool students is below the passing mark at 58.9%, compared to 82.1% for regular school students. However, this data must be taken with caution, since only 9 students exempted from attending school sat the exam there (compared to 3,828 students in ordinary school), which means that failure can have a strong impact on the mean.

Without commenting directly on the results compiled by The Pressthe office of the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, said it was “sensitive to the situation” and promised to offer “more support” to parents if necessary.

Exam Formats

According to Christine Brabant, professor and researcher specializing in home education in the Department of Administration and Educational Foundations at the University of Montreal, the results are consistent with what the scientific literature asserts. “In general, we see a tendency for the results to be equivalent or superior for children who learn as a family, except in mathematics, where generally, this advantage is not there”, indicates the researcher.

The more marked difference in mathematics could be explained, according to her, by the way in which the exams are designed.

“It also raises the whole question of training [aux examens] “, underlines for his part the remedial teacher Yvon Magnette, specialized in home education.

“A 5 to 8% difference is very good, especially when you consider that regular school students are regularly subjected to the same modus operandi for assessment, while families who go to school at home promote realistic, concrete learning. Making a nesting box for birds, for example, is an opportunity for them to learn certain notions of mathematics,” he says.

However, care must be taken not to make these results say what they do not reveal, warn the two experts. The Ministry of Education states on its website that the annual compulsory exams are designed from a “system regulation perspective” rather than for the purpose of comparing students with each other. “They are used to check whether the teachers give the material in the form of a skill”, nuance M^me Brabant.

Furthermore, from a statistical point of view, the small sample of pupils doing school at home (between 10 and 20 per level at home in each CSS, against 2,500 to 4,000 in the schools) could be the cause large deviations from the mean.

No results collected at the Ministry

Even if the Legault government has forced homeschooled children to take the Ministry’s exams to ensure “the same chances of success and graduation”, the Ministry of Education has not collected any results for these children after the June 2022 exams.

These tests are “administered and marked by schools, school service centers and school boards [anglophones] “, specified the Ministry in its written response to our request for access to information, but the latter have no obligation to transmit the results to it.

The Affluents school service center in Lanaudière also told us that it was unable to establish an average score for the 56 home-schooled students in its coverage area. “We could not establish this data without consulting the information concerning each student, individually,” explained lawyer Laurence Gascon, responsible for access to documents at the CSS des Affluents. However, the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies and the protection of personal information limits access to information “whose communication does not require calculation or comparison of information”, she justified.

This absence of data does not surprise Christine Brabant, professor and researcher specializing in home education in the department of administration and foundations of education at the University of Montreal. ” The Ministry [de l’Éducation] collects little data. Before, they had a research department, but they have almost no more researchers,” she underlines.

A few “0%” volunteers

The Press also learned that several homeschooling families encouraged their children to go to the Ministry’s mandatory exams last June, but not complete them, for voluntarily obtaining a “0%” mark.

Our data shows that this is the case for at least 37 children in the Montreal region, out of a total of approximately 500 children exempted from attendance who took the exams. Their marks were not taken into account in the overall averages for the Ministry’s compulsory examinations.

The Association québécoise pour l’éducation à domicile (AQED), which represents 1,800 homeschooling families, claims not to have encouraged its members to act in this way, but indicates that it has previously obtained insurance and informed its members that a mark of “0%” would have no consequence on the right of parents to continue education at home.

“There is no obligation of result”, maintains the president of the AQED, Marine Dumond-Després. “The CSS send a letter to the parents proving that the child was present for the exam. The parent just has to send this letter, which does not contain the note, to the ministry [de l’Éducation]so that the little box saying that the family has fulfilled its obligations is checked,” she adds.

Asked about this, the office of the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, said he found this situation “worrying” and indicated that he would ask for a “complete picture” from Ministry officials. “We will not compromise on this,” said the minister’s spokesperson, Florence Plourde.

With the collaboration of William Leclerc, The Press