Our mediocre schools | The Press

In quick succession, Monday and Tuesday, two articles came to remind us of the extent to which Quebec schools produce mediocrity.

Before going any further, a word for teachers and all school staff: the first paragraph of this column is not aimed at you. You know how much I hold you in high esteem. I’ve said it a thousand times.

This is the system I’m aiming for. And the political.

Monday, therefore, it is Marie-Eve Morasse who writes on the ministerial test of written French of 5^e secondary (1), 2022 edition. In 2020 and 2021, this examination did not take place, due to the pandemic.

The right word: “disaster”, because success rates are plummeting. In some school service centers, nearly half of the young people have failed. Between 2019 and 2022, all but six CSSs saw declines in pass rates.

We learn in this text that the ministerial exam historically accounted for 50% of the final grade…

But not in 2022.

In 2022, the departmental review counted for only 20%.

Translation: the system has (still) graduated a lot of Quebecers who can’t write.

Tuesday, it was Louise Leduc who unearthed this pearl (2): step of 6^e year for children in difficulty. Schoolchildren who have struggled since 1^D year “jump” the 6^e and go directly to secondary school, in adaptation classes.

The scandal, it is of course the transversal incompetence of the system which struggles to help the schoolchildren as soon as they show difficulties, from their first steps in primary school. Égide Royer has always denounced this scandal, he does it again in this article. Our Lada-shaped school system instead advances its students from one level to another: what is a life failure for these children becomes an artificial statistical success for the system.

A public school worthy of the name would have the means to mobilize so that children in difficulty are really supported, from the first years of primary school.

This is almost never the case: they are instead sent to ordinary classes (so-called “regular”) where it is hoped that teachers not trained in special education will be able to manage 15 regular students, 6 students with difficulties (hyperactivity, attention, dyslexia) and 3 students with behavioral problems.

The education reform of more than 20 years ago promised to integrate struggling students into mainstream classes with plenty of pedagogical support.

What is “educational support”?

Examples: TES (technicians in special education), remedial teachers, speech therapists and psychologists who would be in schools, in abundance, in support of teachers.

It never happened. It never happened because each time the PQ and Liberal governments cut funding to school boards – austerity, zero deficit, etc. –, these have cut employees off from educational support.

In reality, this means that Julie, a teacher of 4^e in a “regular” class, alone manages six ADHD students and two undiagnosed students who show every sign of being on the autism spectrum.

And there is Kevin-Gilles who often throws his snack across the class for no reason. Him, we don’t really know what he has…

Result number 1 of this dysfunctional class: neither the regular students nor the students in difficulty receive an optimal education.

Result number 2: after a few years, Julie, exhausted, ends up dropping out and going to work in her sister-in-law’s vertical blinds business.

Result number 3: the students of Julie’s class, eight years later, find themselves at CEGEP where the teachers discover that they are struggling to find the verb in a sentence (3)!

Result number 4: some of the parents of students in Julie’s class, disconcerted, enroll their child in private school, in secondary school.

I started to write occasionally about the school in 2015. I read the Monday and Tuesday texts published in The Press and I see that nothing has changed in eight years.

Despite promises and reforms, the school system overseen by the Ministry of Education excels in two disciplines:

One, disguising the stats to hide its systemic failures;

Two, lower the bar to award diplomas to as many teenagers as possible, even if it means graduating functional illiterates.

This image – “graduating functional illiterates” – is not mine, it is that of a CEGEP teacher in May 2021, quoted in an article by To have to (4) about the consternation of many teachers at the deficiencies in French among their students arriving from secondary school.

So, sorry, when the Department of Education says the graduation rate has gone from 70.4% (1998) to 82% (2014): I just don’t believe it. The whole system lowers the bar and arranges the notes with the views guy (5), it’s been known for years.

Lower the bar, arrange the notes? Message received from a CEGEP teacher, recently, who reminds me that she cannot remove more than 10 percentage points for French mistakes.

What gives, in reality?

That gives 18 students out of 28 who have recently lost all of these 10 percentage points, at the rate of 0.5 points per fault, 20 faults. We are talking about a text of 500 words, a page and a half. After 20 faults, we stop penalizing them.

It gives sentences like the one I was able to read last year, a sentence written by someone who is enrolled in CEGEP: “Now we can even see a lot of series and films with at least one person of ethnic origin . »

Seventeen words, five basic mistakes (which shouldn’t even be complicated for someone who graduated from 5^e secondary) and a meaningless formula (a person of ethnic origin).

Hello, Bernard, I imagine that your officials put this column in your press review…

Yes, allow me to simply call you “Bernard”, dear Bernard Drainville, since we have known each other for so long in the media.

Congratulations on your appointment to the Ministry of Education. But be careful, they will fill you up like they filled all your predecessors with bullshit.

I know, I know, they’ll tell you I’m exaggerating. They will tell you that everything is fine, Minister!

But I will give you a hint of the mediocrity of your ministry, dear Bernard. It’s a phrase taken from Louise Leduc’s text on students in difficulty that we catapult directly from the 5^e year to 1^D secondary: It is impossible to quantify the number of students in Quebec who are exempted from taking their 6^e year. The Ministry of Education told us that they had no data to send us on the subject…

You see, Bernard: no data, no problems.

And when there is data, well, we make it up. We put a nice wig on them, we apply a filter like on Instagram and there, the data, Bernard, can we see them differently.