I make no secret of it: I found the secondary school registration process detestable from start to finish. I cursed every second of it, especially because I felt we were trapped in the three-tier system, where real inequities coupled with stereotypes immensely devalue public schools. And I’m not even talking about the famous “winner list”.
Shop your school
My daughter, now 12 years old, has always attended the local primary school, located a street corner from the house. A stimulating environment, coupled with a very tight-knit community. Since kindergarten, the friendships developed at school continue in the park, at the skating rink, in our streets. The children’s parents in turn become friends. Some really nice gangs are forming. Then comes the choice of secondary school, which forces us to “shopping” from the fifth year onwards and which will spread all these beautiful people (basically privileged) to the four corners of the city.
We took it easy. Two visits to the public: the one offering a specific drama program, then the one to the neighborhood, with an intermediate education program, international profile (PEI). Both not too far from the house. Big favorite for the first one, which corresponds in every way to my daughter’s profile. She comes away delighted with her visit, me too. But you shouldn’t get too carried away!
You will have to write a cover letter, participate in a workshop-audition-selection interview which, if we succeed, will place us in a freelance pool: it is chance that will have the last word.
So this requires a plan B. The chances are great that she will be admitted to the IEP at the local school, we can breathe. But, suddenly, we also visit a private school, which will make my child say: “But mom, it’s too rich, too beautiful, it makes no sense that they can have all that when the The toilets at my school are disgusting and we don’t even have a real gymnasium! » Lucid remark, to which I can object.
We keep all this in mind, and then sixth grade arrives. This is where it gets harder. Fortuitously, discussions come to our ears. “We are PSNM, Régina, Notre-Dame, Jean-Eudes or Mont-Saint-Louis. » ; “We just have one child, of course it will be private. It’s like a hotel: why settle for a motel (read: the public) when you can treat yourself to a five-star? » ; “We take it relaxed” (great, us too!), “we visited PSNM, Mont-Saint-Louis and Régina last year, we are pre-registered at the three places and, now, we are going to look at the FACE, of Ville-Marie and of Jeanne-Mance”.
Relax, you said? And this is how, through conversations, we begin to doubt, to stress, even to panic: have we really done everything to provide a fulfilling environment for our child?
Conflict of values
And hop ! We’re adding a few last minute visits to our schedule. A private school beyond our means with a rich extracurricular cultural life, 50 minutes by bus from home; and a public school specializing in the arts, which also operates on a freelance basis and requires sending a bunch of forms and documents, in order please, which immediately excludes families less capable of harnessing the demanding bureaucratic requirements. The icing on the ice cream which, at this stage, makes us nauseous: registration for the school’s admissions workshop perceived as too good. Who knows, happiness might be found there…
At this point, high school registration has become our only topic of conversation between parents. We navigate among the not always well-formulated requirements of school pharmacies, we fill out paper and digital documents, we dig through the report cards, birth certificates, proof of address, send them in the right format, we re-read the cover letters , prepare the auditions, lark, we will be fleeced. Insomnia assails us, we end up doing the exact opposite of what we wanted to do, stretching the elastic of our values even if it means it blows in our face because “our child deserves that.” “.
The answers trickle in. The first: waiting list for a private school… But with a few well-placed appeals and above-average grades, we are told, anything remains possible. The second: acceptance to the private school considered too good — the workshop was ultimately super nice, it will really be worth considering, even if our budget is more or less in agreement. The third: acceptance to school with a specific theater program. It was the first choice, it’s a party, even if we had prepared for the worst, freelancing can leave even the most motivated students behind. What happens next doesn’t matter, the tension drops. Exhausted as I am, a virus finishes me off.
What solutions?
You will no doubt have noticed that in our secondary school race, there were only two speeds: public programs and private programs, the result of peer pressure. The “regular” audience was not on our radar.
Before all this, I listened to the excellent podcast Everyone has their own class, by Karine Dubois, which greatly overlaps with the experience described above. Among other things, it discusses the Finnish school system, where you are required to enroll in the public secondary school closest to your home. Attendance, books, meals… everything is free. Asked if families were looking to move to attend a specific school, one parent replied no, laughing. “There is no school market in Finland! » ; all schools are equivalent, populated by teenagers from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, with and without diagnoses, with and without an intervention plan.
What if it was one of the keys to the Quebec education system? This is particularly what the École ensemble collective believes, which has explored the issue and exhaustively analyzed an impressive quantity of variables. Shouldn’t the school system smooth out inequities rather than deepen them? Reflection to follow, in a second text.