Starting next school year, Quebec students will take mandatory courses on violence and mental health issues, and schools will be required to document all cases of violence and bullying.
The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, unveiled his strategy on violence and bullying in schools on Friday. This is accompanied by an envelope of $30 million over five years.
Mr. Drainville made the commitment to table this plan last March, while several cases of violence in schools were in the media. At the time, the elected official said he felt a “post-COVID effect” in schools, noting that the pandemic had “exacerbated mental health problems among young people”.
Starting in the fall, therefore, primary school students will take seven hours of compulsory courses “in order to develop their personal, social and emotional skills” by exploring the themes of violence and mental health. At the secondary level, nine hours of classes will be added to the program, under a ministerial directive on which Mr. Drainville is working.
A register of violent events
From the start of the school year, schools will have to “record the number of events of violence and intimidation” and transmit this information to the ministry. This data “will make it possible to better monitor the evolution of the phenomenon,” argued Mr. Drainville. The elected official hopes that the information “will be used by schools to adjust their actions and improve their control plan”.
Anti-violence and anti-bullying plans are already mandatory in all schools. To these will be added “emergency protocols in the event of major events of a violent nature”, also obligatory.
Minister Drainville’s plan also provides for all school staff to be trained “on the most effective preventive actions and interventions when situations of violence and intimidation arise.” The training will focus in particular on sexual violence, as provided for in the National Student Ombudsman Act.
The amounts provided in the Drainville plan must also be used for the training of “specialized intervention teams in targeted schools based on the risk of violence, available resources and the needs of the community”.