The Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, estimates that it will take five years to resolve the teacher shortage. In an interview with The duty To take stock of his term, he says he has implemented reforms that will be felt in the long term, after two trying years in the school network due to the pandemic.
“I think that in five years we will have regained serenity. In some regions, in some areas, it will be very fast. But before you think it’s behind us [la pénurie d’enseignants]you have to give yourself a good five years,” said Jean-François Roberge during a 75-minute interview at his Montreal office, located in the Centre-Sud district.
The large windows on the ninth floor overlook the river, La Ronde and the Port of Montreal. In the distance, everything seems calm, but the minister recognizes that the school network has gone through two stormy years because of the pandemic.
“There is still a lot of work to do, but there is a change in perspective. The best is yet to come,” he says.
“I understand that in the teachers’ rooms and with some teachers, they don’t feel that yet. I understand that because they probably just had the toughest two years of their careers. It was hard. Learning delays, mental health issues, very high absenteeism rates, staff shortages, it was tough. I recognize it, I am not disconnected, I myself know enough teachers, school principals, to know it. But for sure the best is yet to come. We put everything in place, we made all the transformations so that the best is yet to come,” added the Minister of Education for the past four years.
Jean-François Roberge “regrets nothing”, except perhaps having decreed “two weeks of vacation” for everyone when the health crisis broke out, in March 2020. For the rest, he defends his decisions of the past four years, even the most controversial, including the introduction of 4-year-old kindergarten and the reform of school governance, which led to the abolition of commissioners elected by universal suffrage.
He is particularly proud of having invested massively in the renovation and construction of schools (120 new establishments were started) and of having transformed the Ethics and Religious Culture course into a Culture and Citizenship and Quebec course.
“These are very structuring things, the benefits of which we will see in several years,” he said. Jean-François Roberge drew up a list of 20 outstanding achievements, which include in particular the supervision of fees charged to parents, the financing of specific projects in public schools and the creation of the position of National Student Ombudsman. Education was the priority of Prime Minister Legault, who paved the way for major transformations of the network, according to Mr. Roberge.
Quebec citizenship
The minister denies having politicized the Culture and Quebec Citizenship course, described by his opponents as a propaganda tool in the wake of the Legault government’s identity vision.
“In Quebec culture, of course there is First Nations and Aboriginal culture. When I say “we”, it’s us, inhabitants of the Quebec territory, with the native inhabitants, that’s for sure. I didn’t have the mandate to do anything divisive. The objective was not to be divisive, it is unifying. There was no political plan to do something that was going to pay off from an electoral point of view. It was not this. I really believe it will bring people together,” he said.
Minister Roberge highlights his initiatives aimed at overcoming the shortage of teachers, including theagreement “historic” with teachers for salary increases of 14% at the top of the scale and 18% at the start of their career. This agreement also grants the long-requested autonomy for the management of work time.
He also defends the establishment of qualifying master’s degrees for aspiring teachers who hold a bachelor’s degree in a discipline without having had any training in pedagogy. These widely popular programs have been criticized for devaluing the traditional four-year college course with internships for teachers. Enrollments in university education are also on the rise.
“In an ideal world, before entering a class as a teacher, you would have completed all your training. It’s certain. But as we speak, we are experiencing the shortage. You have to be more in practical solutions mode than in an ideal theoretical framework,” says Jean-François Roberge.
“Out of 100 classes, 95 teachers have a certificate. For the other five classes, what do we do? We return the children to the house and we say: “Are you not in school?” Or we bring in people who have a disciplinary baccalaureate, we accompany them, we register them for the master’s degree. I think we have the right solution,” added the Minister.
To promote the professions in education, Jean-François Roberge announced a plan of 140 million to promote the teaching profession, in addition to improving mentoring for new teachers. Quebec has also invested record sums in hiring professionals (psychologists, orthopedagogues, speech therapists, etc.).