(Quebec) Montreal school administrators are urging Quebec to push back the date for transmitting the results of the second stage for secondary school graduates to March 13, so that students who missed almost five weeks of school during the strike have sufficient of time before being evaluated and applying for admission to CEGEP.
In a letter obtained by The Press which was sent Tuesday to the Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Déry, as well as to the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, the Montreal Association of School Directors (AMDES) is calling for “immediate action to restore equity for public school students in the greater Montreal region.
If nothing is done, it is said, students who missed a lot of school during the education labor dispute risk becoming “second class graduates.”
A “unanimous” request
To be admitted to a CEGEP, high school students must apply to the programs of their choice through regional college admission services, such as SRAM and SRACQ. These organizations then proceed to analyze the files according to a system of rounds. The deadline for the first round is set each year on 1er March. After each round, the quota programs and the most coveted CEGEPs have fewer and fewer places available.
In its letter sent to Quebec, AMDES deplores that the SRAM (which manages admission applications from CEGEPs in the metropolitan region) requires that the grades of the second stage be transmitted no later than February 21, even if the graduates public schools whose teachers are affiliated with the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE) missed nearly five weeks of class last fall.
“The management of Montreal secondary schools are unanimous, this date will not allow teachers from establishments that faced a closure of almost five weeks to teach the content of the second stage and evaluate them by February 21. Thus, it is clear to us that maintaining this date will cause significant harm to students in public secondary schools in Greater Montreal,” writes AMDES.
“We are disappointed with this situation even though during our participation in the work of the catch-up plan with the Ministry of Education, we were told that the connection would be made with the college network, which obviously does not is not the case,” she continues.
Favored private school students
According to AMDES, high school graduates who attend a private school are favored in the context, given that they did not miss school during the labor conflict between the government and teachers and professionals of the public network.
“We would have told secondary school administrators that their students could benefit from places in the second round of SRAM when we know that this is false for several programs since all places are filled in the first round for certain CEGEPs and for several programs in arts offered in the metropolis,” affirm Montreal school management.
“It is important to act quickly so that the college network makes the necessary corrections to guarantee fairness between all graduates, those from private schools, those from regional schools and those from schools in the metropolitan region by pushing back the date of transmission of notes by March 13, 2024,” they ask.
After the presentation of Bernard Drainville’s catch-up plan on January 9, the educational community denounced that the particular case of high school graduates, in connection with admission to CEGEP, was the government’s “blind spot”, according to this what reported The Quebec Journal.
During his announcement, Minister Drainville announced that the transmission of the second bulletin was postponed from March 15 to 28 to give “more time for teaching and to promote catching up on learning”. For the moment, students of 5e secondary are excluded from this suspension.