The government saved more than half a billion dollars in salaries during the education strikes last fall, more than the sum of 300 million invested in the educational catch-up plan, reveals the 2024-2025 budget tabled in Quebec on Tuesday, which forecasts growth in spending reaching 7.6% in education.
In total, $569 million in salaries were not paid while teachers and other school staff were on the streets for the renewal of their collective agreements, or $510 million for staff. primary and secondary education and 59 million for CEGEP staff. Some were on strike for almost a month.
This school break is also felt in the provincial budget, which devotes more than 540 million dollars over 5 years to support the educational success of young people, including 300 million in the catch-up plan to help students who would experience difficulties as a result of missed school days. This plan was announced last January, at the end of the strikes.
The rest of the millions that were not paid to striking teachers were reinvested in education, it was clarified on Tuesday in Quebec. A page of the 2024-2025 budget also recalls the “improvements in working conditions” for teachers, including the salary increase of 17.4% over five years.
“Before the expected effect” of the new collective agreements is felt in the recruitment and retention of staff in schools, Quebec is investing 114 million in three measures to keep retirees employed and support teachers, but also to “make part-time positions more attractive”, by adding substitute days to teachers whose contracts are not full-time.
The budget also details certain measures planned by the government to promote academic success, including an online support service for students who have difficulties in French and an awareness campaign to develop a taste for reading among students.
The Ministry of Education also wants to identify good practices from “efficient” school service centers regarding the success of boys.
Schools still in poor condition
The Quebec Infrastructure Plan (PQI) provides that $1.1 billion will be invested in school buildings and the majority of this amount will go to “priority repair work on components related to the health and safety of people , as well as the integrity of buildings.
In fact, 56% of primary and secondary schools are still in poor or very poor condition.
Noting that “despite significant investments in recent years, several schools remain aging”, the government will inject an additional 100 million over the next five years to accelerate the maintenance of the building stock.
The CAQ government is also continuing its transformation of school governance, undertaken with the abolition of school boards in 2019. More than 16 million will be devoted to it over the next five years.
“What we have managed to do in health, we will have to do in education,” declared Eric Girard, referring to the “dashboards” of the Ministry of Health, which give a real-time overview of the state of the network. In education, the government wants access to “relevant, reliable and timely data,” we read in the budget.
Noting that disadvantaged families are affected by the increase in prices at the grocery store and that children show up to school daily without having eaten, the organizations La Cantine pour tous and the Breakfast Club obtain 34 million on the five coming years to sustain their activities with young people.
CEGEPs and universities: educational success at the forefront
In higher education, the increase in spending amounts to 4%.
As in primary and secondary schools, Quebec is investing to promote the success of CEGEP and university students by injecting 370 million over the next 5 years. The Fédération des cégeps, however, is of the opinion that the funds allocated for success and mental health are “insufficient”.
Quebec takes note of the difficulty many students have in finding housing and is injecting $7.5 million over 5 years to increase, “in the short term,” the number of housing reserved for students.
The Quebec Infrastructure Plan is more ambitious: within 10 years, nearly 198 million are planned to finance 28 housing projects intended for CEGEP and university students.
The PQI also specifies that a “major project” aimed at increasing the reception capacity of Polytechnique Montréal must also be submitted to the government over the next year.