The Drainville reform in education is creating its first stir: the members of the Accreditation Committee for teacher training programs – the CAPFE, a committee of experts responsible for evaluating teacher training – all resigned on Thursday.
In a letter sent to the media, resigning interim president Liliane Binggeli writes that CAPFE is “attacked” by the reform proposed by the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville. “With this bill, many will be the losers,” predicts Mme Binggeli.
In fact, the Drainville reform provides for the abolition of CAPFE, whose mission would be transferred to a new Institute of Excellence in Education.
By submitting their resignations on Thursday, the ten members of CAPFE therefore did not wait for the legislative text to pass through the National Assembly and therefore for their positions to be abolished. Taking the lead, they said they considered “no longer able to offer their expertise to contribute fairly to maintaining the quality of professional training for teachers, which certainly has an impact on the success of students in Quebec.”
In the opinion of M.me Binggeli, the abolition of the CAPFE “will lead to the loss of expertise built and transmitted rigorously over a period of 25 years by actors and actresses of the education community working at the heart of the teaching profession”.
Mme Binggeli believes that the education reform project “explicitly withdraws” its independence from CAPFE, even though it is provided for in the Education Act. This independence was essential to part of CAPFE’s mandate, which consists of “analyzing [et] accredit teacher training programs leading to certification,” she writes.
Solicited by The duty, Minister Drainville’s office said it “take note” of the decision of the CAPFE members. “We are grateful for their commitment,” wrote the minister’s spokesperson, Florence Plourde. She recalled that Bill 23 “entrusts the National Institute of Excellence in Education with the mandate to formulate opinions to the Minister of Education on the training programs for future teachers”.
Last August, tensions between CAPFE and the former Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, erupted into the open. Minister Roberge had approved four short training programs for future teachers without waiting for CAPFE’s opinion — or even against the committee’s unfavorable opinion, in one of these cases.
In the process, the minister had terminated the mandate of the then president of CAPFE, Marc-André Éthier, also a professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Montreal.