Drainville Reform | More powers to the minister, a new institute

(Quebec) After health, it is the turn of education to have its reform. With his bill to be tabled Thursday, the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, will give himself more powers in the management of the school network. And, surprisingly, he will make a gesture long requested to ensure that decisions in education and teaching methods are based on evidence from research: create a national institute of excellence in education.

However, the unions have always opposed this measure which, in their view, would encroach on the professional autonomy of teachers. A confrontation is brewing.

This new organization will be the counterpart for the school network of the National Institute of Excellence in Health and Social Services (INESSS), an organization whose important role for professionals and the entire health network has been better known to the general public with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bernard Drainville’s bill will not have the magnitude of the vast reform of his health colleague, Christian Dubé, with its 300 pages and its thousand articles. But he will shake the columns of the temple in his own way, as Prime Minister François Legault telegraphed in an interview with The Press in March.

Bernard Drainville will give himself new powers with his bill. It will itself appoint – or dismiss if necessary – the directors general of the school service centers and will ask them to report to it.

The boards of directors of school service centers – created in the first CAQ mandate to replace school commissioners – will thus lose power.

François Legault had justified this change in governance during the interview. In school service centres, he pointed out, “there are things that are done [par les directeurs généraux] with the agreement of the board of directors which do not necessarily suit us”.

In the health sector, “with Christian Dubé and [avant lui] Danielle McCann, we changed the CEOs of CISSS and CIUSSS at our request. We don’t have that power over the general managers of the service centres,” he lamented.

The Prime Minister then defended himself from wanting to “centralize everything”. “There have to be decisions that remain decentralized, but you still have to have the power to act when it doesn’t work. »

In the school network, in light of Mr. Legault’s statements, we have been preparing for the worst for a few weeks. Managers research job security provisions. It is feared that the government will put the current directors general on waivers and then ask them to apply for the new positions appointed by the minister himself. This is what Gaétan Barrette had done in the Couillard government with the executives of the health network. In Quebec, there is no indication that the Legault government is going that far. But the situation illustrates to what extent Quebec’s intentions are causing a stir in the network.

Measure network performance

One of the major sources of frustration in Quebec is the inability to obtain data on the performance of the network, the efficiency of services, or even an accurate picture of student success. Numerous reports have demonstrated the absence of statistics at the Ministry on several subjects that are nevertheless fundamental. The new powers will henceforth allow the Minister to require the necessary information from school service centres.

Bernard Drainville intends to standardize the collection of data in the network and to oblige the sending of the results to the Ministry.

We would thus constitute a kind of dashboard in Quebec to measure the performance of the network and guide the minister in his decisions.

Quebec has other aims with the change in governance. We deplore the fact that the measures to grant more autonomy to schools, adopted under the Roberge reform, are not implemented because of the resistance or practices of certain school service centres.

School administrators complain, for example, that “resource distribution committees” – responsible for redistributing money according to the needs of each school in a school service center – still do not exist in certain regions. Or that in half of the school service centres, all the information on their income and expenses is not sent to the committee, which prevents it from making informed decisions.

An expected institute

Bernard Drainville will go ahead with the creation of a national institute of excellence in education, as it exists elsewhere in Canada and Europe. This measure will help improve student success, the government believes. It has long been called for by many experts – one of the best known is Égide Royer from Université Laval.

Basically, the institute would identify good practices in education based on scientific research – in teaching and governance, for example – and then recommend them to the government and the network in order to implement them.

This is also the mandate of INESSS in the health sector. The D^r Luc Boileau headed this organization before becoming national director of public health last year.

Minister of Education at the end of the reign of Philippe Couillard, Sébastien Proulx had formed a working group to create a national institute of excellence in education, but there was no follow-up.

This group was led by the professor specializing in education Martin Maltais – who was subsequently deputy chief of staff to Jean-François Roberge –, a teacher from the Laurentians, Hélène Lecavalier, and the director general of the Marguerite-Bourgeoys school board, Dominic Bertrand. The latter became in April “strategic adviser” to the Ministry of Education. Former rector Claude Corbo and veteran sociologist Guy Rocher, a member of the Parent commission, had contributed to the work of the committee.

His report was made public in 2018, an election year. The committee insisted that the institute be “independent and autonomous”. “We are also proposing an institute that does not have the mandate to standardize practices or to position itself ideologically with regard to the multiple approaches in education or modes of school management,” we can read.

Its mandate must be carried out “with respect for professional autonomy and the integrity of the educational projects determined in collaboration with the parents”.

The institute should have three “general objectives”, again according to the committee:

– draw up the most exhaustive and objective summary possible of the state of available scientific knowledge, in Québec and elsewhere, on any question concerning educational success and monitor it scientifically;

– ensure the transfer of the results of scientific research to the school network, decision-makers and the public;

– contributing to the training and support of those involved – such as teachers – with regard to the best educational practices, and evaluating their effects.

The teachers’ unions, the CSQ and the FAE, opposed the creation of such an institute. It is a “superfluous structure” which would harm the professional autonomy of teachers and would not respond to the “real problems experienced” by their members, according to them.

In Quebec, other reflections in progress are likely to cringe in the union ranks. Consideration is being given to implementing more advanced continuing education for teachers and raising the eligibility criteria for faculties of education, particularly with regard to mastery of French. Quebec wants to set up a fast track to obtain the teaching certificate, intended for holders of a bachelor’s degree in other disciplines so that they are legally qualified to teach.

For Bernard Drainville, the tabling of his reform on Thursday is also an opportunity to be talked about for something other than the decline on the promise of a third highway link between Quebec and Lévis, his riding.