It will not be until February 7 that we will know if the agreement concluded by the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE) will be ratified by the members. Many members of the FAE loudly express their discontent with this agreement.
Does this loudly expressed discontent mean that the government’s offer will be rejected? Answering this question is the equivalent of pretending to see the future in fish guts.
What is clear: the teachers’ discontent does not revolve around cashit focuses on the “composition of the class”, this concept which imprinted itself on consciousness with the fall education strike.
The composition of the class in Quebec is often very heavy: if you have a hard core of students in difficulty in your class, teaching becomes extremely complicated and exhausting. This has been denounced by teachers for years. Hence the “composition of the class” as a key issue in teacher-government negotiations.
It is obvious that several teachers are extremely disappointed with the “gains” on the composition of the class. This partly explains why three affiliated unions (out of nine) recommended to their members to reject the agreement (two recommended accepting it).
Wednesday, my comrade Paul Journet1 has carefully dissected the agreements between the State and the two major education unions, the FAE and the FSE-CSQ. Paul explains the differences in “mechanisms” regarding how to manage students in difficulty, in the agreements concluded by the two unions.
I quote him: “The FAE demanded the creation of new classes. This required teachers who simply did not exist. »
So, for the FAE, teachers will be able to receive a bonus ranging between $4,000 and $8,000 if their class is overwhelmed by “PIs”, students with intervention plans. On paper, the amounts are attractive. In reality, it’s not a question of money: adding $75 to $150 gross each week to the pay of a hard-working teacher is not going to make her job easier.
The idea of distributing the task among a larger number of teachers – by adding classes, special or regular – is indeed a solution… If we have teachers. And space in often dilapidated schools.
It is also a criticism of the education unions that often came up in my messages, during the turbulent autumn that we have just emerged from: The government still can’t clone teachers!
This is entirely true, but we cannot blame a union for trying to impose a viable solution in negotiations with the boss, in this case the government.
In mid-December, I explained my fear in The Press on heartbreaking negotiations that would have no effect in reality, in classes2.
A month later, what seems clear to me is that the ills of modern schools will not have been resolved by this negotiation.
We will see how, in reality, certain aid measures offered by the State will be deployed. The question of “classroom aids” is interesting for some teachers, less so for others. We will judge the tree by its fruits, as they say.
But the main problem remains the same: the skimming of public school students through competition from special (public) programs and private schools means that students in difficulty are over-represented in so-called “regular” classes. ” to the public.
This ends up exhausting the teachers who have to pay a lot of attention to the hard core of students in difficulty… at the expense of the regular students. Worried, the parents of these neglected students will decide, if they can afford it, to send their children to private school…
It’s a never-ending vicious circle.
You may pay teachers $150,000 a year, but if they feel overwhelmed and abandoned, they won’t be happier. They won’t feel any less exhausted.
A word on the CAQ and education.
The CAQ has been in power since 2018. It inherited an unloved school network, neglected by decades of setbacks and cutbacks disguised under slogans like “austerity” and “zero deficit”.
An example of retrenchment: school boards could not lay off teachers. When it was necessary to cut a few million, where did they cut? Among those who could be crowned outside, like psychologists, orthopedagogues, speech therapists.
Today, the State wants to bring these professionals back into schools, to support teachers. Guess what ? They discovered that they can practice very well in private, without sweating in public…
An example of regression now: the education reform initiated by the PQ and sealed by the Liberals, a completely crazy witchcraft effort that hurt schools for years.
The CAQ inherited these evils, it did not create them. She has her faults, notably on this stupid reform which abolished the school boards… To transform them into school service centers which do exactly what the school boards did.
Lesson ?
When you neglect a system for years, it takes years to get it back on track…
If we succeed.
The school system, always cunning, will continue to do what it has been doing for years to hide its failures: it will continue to force schools to “move” all students to the next level.
This will result in secondary III students who have not passed their maths since 4e or the 5e year, this will result in CEGEP students who do not master French3 and who have difficulty understanding a moderately complex text4. It will also lead to school principals writing messages full of mistakes to parents5…
And when a teacher dares to denounce this leveling to the bottom, we will fire her6.
In short, from primary to CEGEP and even university, teachers will continue to subtly lower the bar, encouraged by the system: We can’t make everyone sink, though!
That will not change, regardless of the results of union members’ votes on collective agreements in education.