Minister of Education Bernard Drainville presented Tuesday a very “flexible” “catch-up plan of 300 million” to help students who missed several days of school due to the strike.
“We will not go wall to wall,” assured the minister. “It is the needs of the students that will guide us,” he added. It is the school teams that are best placed to determine the needs in their environment.
The proposed measures include tutoring on a voluntary basis after classes and specialized help for students with special needs. Schools which deem it necessary will be able to offer catch-up during the spring break, added the minister, specifying however that it will be up to each school to determine this.
The end-of-year tests will be postponed by two weeks to “free up as much time as possible” before them. “No examination will take place after June 23,” however, clarified the minister. The weighting will also be modified so as not to penalize students who were affected by the strike.
The minister concocted this plan urgently during the holiday break, after reaching an agreement with the striking unions on December 28. On January 4, he said he had held meetings with ministry teams, representatives of school centers, school principals, parent committees and unions.
Several teachers would nevertheless have liked to have been informed earlier of this catch-up plan since they were at work from Monday to themselves prepare for the return of students on Tuesday morning.
Students who were in schools represented by the 66,500 teachers of the Autonomous Federation of Teachers (FAE) missed a total of 22 days, while those who were with the Common Front, which has 420,000 workers including 95,000 teachers, missed missed a total of eight days over several weeks.
More details will follow.
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