Public secondary schools | Specific programs “difficult to pass”

Dance, music, arts, sciences: in secondary school, special programs are coveted by both students and their parents. This is the path chosen by the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, to increase the attractiveness of public schools, but setting up such programs is not an easy task.

By 2026, Quebec wants three-quarters of students attending a public secondary school to be in a specific program. Currently, this is the case for less than half (44.6%) of students, according to the 2023-2024 Action Plan of the Ministry of Education.

Minister Bernard Drainville recently invited parents to “push so that there are special projects in their schools”.

However, “it is almost the most difficult matter to pass in a governing board,” says Sylvain Martel, president of the Regroupement des committees de parents nationaux du Québec (RCPAQ).

Implementing a particular program “calls into question the entire organization of staff, teaching, pedagogy within the school,” continues Mr. Martel.

“When we enter particular programs, we play in the subject hours. We try to squeezethe famous basketball, and there are some who say that there are no longer enough arts… that creates problems,” illustrates Sylvain Martel, who recalls that the collaboration of school staff is essential.

All in a special program in Drummondville

In the Drummondville region, the Chênes school service center (CSSDC) has taken a radical turn: starting next year, all students will be in a specific high school program. As a result, almost everyone will have to return to their local school.

No more admission criteria. Each year, between 400 and 500 students from this service center were refused the selective program they had chosen. From now on, they will make three choices and they will be given one.

The director general explains that this is a gap in the success rate varying between 5 and 28% in favor of students who were in a particular program, compared to those who were not (and who said “nothing” because than in a “regular” program), which led to awareness. Not everyone had the same opportunities.

“The neighborhood school was not privileged, it was not even a concern that we had,” admits the general director of the CSSDC, Lucien Maltais.

He estimates that at least half of the students traveled outside the territory every day. Within a few years, we hope that 80 to 90% of students will be in their local school.

Change does not happen smoothly.

Caroline’s daughter (fictitious first name, to preserve the teenager’s anonymity) will have to change schools next year. She will have spent two years in a science program into which she was admitted after passing exams.

The transition to secondary school was not easy for the young girl, who struggled to make friends, explains her mother. Now that she has acclimatized to her school and made a social network, she will have to start again in another school, one closer to home.

“It’s hard,” said the mother with emotion. If she had experienced the change in secondary 1, it would have been okay. But it took all her courage to make friends and the next year she lost them,” Caroline explains.

Grumbling

Although parents were consulted, there was “discontent,” says Marie Pier Bessette, president of the CSSDC parents committee.

According to the initial plan of the service center, she explains, all students would have to change schools, even those who were in the last year of their secondary education.

Programs could close due to lack of registrations and two programs are in some way “saved” from this reorganization: sports studies and the Intermediate Education Program (PEI).

Even if the service center adopts a guideline for all its schools, it is up to the governing boards (therefore each school) to manage the “subject grid”, i.e. the allocation of the number of periods for each subject, raises M^me Bessette.

When periods have to be cut to allocate more to a particular program, tensions arise. “It didn’t go well in each governing board,” said M.^me Bessette. It’s easy to say that you’re doing a science program, but if you don’t add periods, you’re calling science regular stuff,” she says.

When the time comes to redo schedules for new programs, “everyone pulls the cover,” confirms Guy Veillette, president of the Drummondville Region Education Union (SERD).

Both among the union and among the parents, we see that the fact that the desire to implement specific programs everywhere came from the service center made things easier.

“It takes a certain cohesion, a certain political will,” says the president of the SERD. “It is up to the service centers and the Ministry to give all students the opportunity to have access to programs and activities,” explains Guy Veillette.

“A lot of courage and logistics”

Marie Pier Bessette also believes that a service center must “force” schools to move towards specific programs so that it is done uniformly in secondary schools.

“It requires a lot of courage and logistics, I don’t think it happens spontaneously [dans chaque école] “, she says.

At the CSSDC, we recognize that the change has made “a lot of dissatisfied people”, but also “a lot of people happy”. It is “difficult” to go against the wishes of students and parents to have special programs at the secondary level, observes its general director, Lucien Maltais.

The service center, he says, has chosen its side: offering programs to everyone, eliminating selection criteria as much as possible and keeping admission fees to a minimum.