All that for this ! Despite substantial salary increases, many teachers are disillusioned. Some unions outright rejected the agreement in principle (in Laval, in Lanaudière), while others narrowly accepted it (in Montreal, in Estrie).
Even if the agreement is ultimately accepted, which requires the support of a majority of unions and a majority of members, these heartbreaking results do not bode well for the future.
The teachers hoped that the strike would lead to a real solution for the care of the many students in difficulty, what is called “class composition”.
It was illusory to believe that these negotiations would resolve all the ills of the school which require reflection beyond the framework of the renewal of an employment contract.
The fact remains that the government sent a very bad signal by offering a bonus of $4,000 or $8,000 to teachers who have more than 60% of children in difficulty in their primary school class or 50% in secondary school.
So let’s see! Half the class in difficulty! It is not a bonus that will make such a situation more acceptable. Neither for teachers nor for young people. This is a recipe for burnout and dropping out of school.
And that risks pushing overdiagnosis, while the number of students in difficulty has already exploded from 103,000 in 2000 to 258,000 today.
These bonuses are like a diachylon on a compound fracture.
The solution lies elsewhere. Or ? Everywhere, across Quebec, there are schools that work miracles with students in difficulty. They are models to follow, to multiply.
This is the case of the Vanguard school, in Saint-Laurent, which welcomes 1,200 students with significant disorders, in primary and secondary schools.
Parents will tell you that they have seen their child “revive” since they attended the establishment that cultivates their strengths, whereas they had always been defined according to their weaknesses. No more intimidation. Hello, adapted resources. The child regains confidence and motivation.
The results are impressive: a success rate of 96% at the end of secondary school. All this with the same budget as the public. As a “private public interest” school, Vanguard is fully publicly funded and gets by on the same amount that a school service center would receive if the same student attended the neighborhood school.
How is it possible ? Instead of scattering scarce resources among schools, we concentrate specialists-speech therapists, psychologists, special educators, psychoeducators, social workers, etc. – which act in complementarity – under the same roof.
In a context of labor shortage, this centralization in specialized schools and classes is a good way to lighten the composition of ordinary classes, while offering young people the help that meets their needs.
The Marguerite-Bourgeoys school service center, which serves more than 70,000 students in western Montreal, has another approach to compensate for the lack of specialized personnel.
It has developed partnerships with social pediatrics centers in the community, libraries, the health network and university researchers to meet the challenges of its clientele who come from 156 countries and two-thirds of whom do not speak French. as a mother tongue.
These precious resources come to the school to train the teachers who sometimes get a head start by following voluntary training, from mid-August, in order to better meet the specific needs of the young people they will have in their class at the start of the school year.
All these efforts are bearing fruit: the graduation and qualification rate of its young people reaches 90.9%, nine points above the provincial average of the public network. Its students with disabilities or social maladjustments or learning difficulties (HDAA) achieve 76% success, 14 points above the provincial average.
There is something to be proud of.
But to lighten the public network, the private sector, which has only 19% of HDAA secondary school students, must make its fair contribution by welcoming the same proportion as the public, i.e. 33%.
Nouvelle-Frontière secondary school, in Gatineau, is getting there. A third of its 1,050 students have intervention plans and their graduation rate exceeds 97%, in particular thanks to remedial teachers who support the teachers.
For young people who experience more difficulties, the establishment has even created the Victoria program, which brings together 20 students in the same class. By teaching them strategies to better organize themselves and manage their impulsiveness, we enable them to reintegrate into ordinary groups after two years. In the first cohort which has just completed its 5e secondary school, no student failed.
Hat !
All these examples prove that it is through innovation that we will be able to resolve the issue of “class composition”.
Quebec is ripe for an in-depth reform of special education. The Minister of Education must get involved quickly if he wants to regain the trust of teachers and ensure that young people obtain the support essential to their success.
A review of research on best practices in special education and on successful models, here as elsewhere, should be at the top of the list of priorities for the new Institute of Excellence in Education which will be created in 2024.
It is time to think about education differently, based on evidence. It was not by perfecting the horse that we invented the airplane, the pioneer of alternative schools Charles Caouette liked to repeat in conferences.
Our young people need a plane. Not from a horse.