We were waiting for a plan for education. Instead, Minister Bernard Drainville served us a grocery list that left us wanting more.
It’s not that the ingredients are bad. On the contrary, the seven priorities he put forward on Thursday have merit. But with seven ingredients, you can just as easily cook a dish worthy of Bocuse as a completely failed dish.
It all depends on the recipe. And that is what is missing at the moment.
In fact, there is a lack of an overall vision based on a complete inventory, with concrete measures to resolve the most pressing issues, with also targets and a precise timetable for measuring progress. In short, a real plan.
But let’s give the runner a chance. Bernard Drainville has been in office for three months. Everyone wants him to succeed where so many others have failed.
For now, Bernard Drainville’s grocery list allows the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) to temporize, to show the public that it is in control of the situation. But just identifying problems isn’t enough to magically fix them. Speak to the Minister of Health and Social Services, Christian Dubé.
There are plenty of problems in our schools. Last week’s news provided further sad proof of this.
First, our colleague Marie-Eve Morasse revealed that the results of the last French exam in 5e secondary had plummeted almost everywhere across Quebec, which cannot be explained solely by the pandemic1.
It would take an electric shock to revalorize French, as we have already pleaded.
So much the better, the minister places French at the top of his list of priorities… but without offering details, which is surprising since the CAQ had promised an in-depth reform of French teaching during the last campaign.
Another cause for concern: our colleague Louise Leduc told us that some children in difficulty go directly from 5e year from primary to year 1D secondary, because we don’t want them to repeat a year twice2.
At the Montreal school service centre, 5% of students going to secondary school are in this situation. It is far from trivial. How many are there across the province? No idea !
Because in Quebec, it’s not just students who have trouble counting. The Ministry of Education too. Too often, data scattered across 72 service centers is not centralized.
Sorry, we are in 2023. Is it too much to ask to have a dashboard to know where we are going?
But let us return to the pupils in difficulty. At the turn of the millennium, we chose to integrate them into ordinary classes, to encourage emulation. That is. But the promised support did not follow. So the teachers find themselves alone with too many students with special needs.
Result ?
Children are stuffed with psychostimulants, suddenly overdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This is particularly true for “class babies” born in July, August and September, revealed our colleague Katia Gagnon.3.
The proportion of young people under 24 taking psychostimulants has risen from 1.9% to 7.7% over the past 20 years in Quebec, where more are prescribed than in any other province. It is highly worrying. In 2020, a group of 15 experts submitted a report with 17 recommendations. And since ? Nothing. It’s time to move on.
Meanwhile, teachers are at their wit’s end. They leave the profession prematurely, which fuels the labor shortage. An unhealthy spiral.
Fortunately, the minister promises reinforcement in the classes, in particular by calling on educators in daycare services, an ingenious solution to give teachers respite, even if it will never replace a remedial teacher or another specialist.
Bernard Drainville also made a wise choice by deciding to re-establish a fast track for a bachelor to obtain his teaching diploma after only one year of training. This is logical when you know that the holder of a bachelor’s or master’s degree, for example in chemistry, can teach this subject at CEGEP, without any teaching certificate.
But these measures are only intended to put out the fires.
What will be done to tackle the central question of academic success? In Quebec, almost a quarter of students do not complete high school in five years, and boys are considerably behind. It is urgent to act, because the shortage of labor makes dropping out of school even more tempting.
Yes, all right, one of Bernard Drainville’s priorities is to “make the school network more efficient”. One cannot be against virtue. But it’s all so vague that it means nothing.
We want to give the minister time to refine his recipe. But in the end, the proof will be in the pudding, as the Anglos say.