Since aspiring Prime Minister François Legault made 4-year-old kindergarten the spearhead of his future government during the last election campaign, everything has been nothing but pitfalls, hiccups and gnashing of teeth. The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, again applied the brakes on this promise by announcing Tuesday yet another postponement of the deployment of 2600 classes, to 2029-2030 this time. Definitely, the labor shortage will end up getting the better of everything that looks like a priority in education.
The announcement was made Tuesday by Mr. Drainville during an interview with the TVA network. “Better to tell the truth than to bullshiter said the minister, whose outspokenness contrasts dramatically with the fine words devoid of realism of some of his predecessors. Mr. Legault had promised, in 2018, to set up 5,000 4-year-old kindergarten classes, hoping to make this universal plan a tool for better success at school. A year later, the ambition of the initial plan was cut back, aiming instead for the opening of 2,600 of these classes before 2023. In 2021, hampered by the shortage of teaching staff, the government postponed its deadline by two years, to 2025. We are now forced to dream of 2030. Does this new postponement signify the failure of the reform?
At the very least, it marks the spectacular failure of poor planning and completely unrealistic anticipation.As of 2018, the shortage of teaching staff was already cruelly hitting the education network, which is facing headwinds, let us remember: it is already struggling to recruit new followers, but it is also experiencing a serious phenomenon of dropping out of recruits, who leave the ship as soon as they embark. In this already breathless context, the pressure to create new classes is too strong.
Result: school principals are not even imagining solutions to open new classes, they must rather close those they had just inaugurated. To open a non-compulsory 4-year-old kindergarten service, we are not going to close a third year!
Nothing in this project works as we had imagined. It was a false good idea. The gains we hoped to make with a transfer from childcare centers have not materialized. No one can stop the ever-worsening labor drain. The hoped-for craze for these kindergartens has not arrived — however, whether there are 6 or 12 pupils in the class, there will always be a need for a room, a teacher and a technician in special education. And the average cost to open a class, estimated to be as low as $120,000 in 2018, has skyrocketed to nearly a million.
We can deplore that the initial vision was not installed on a good foundation, but Minister Drainville must face up to his responsibilities. He has no choice but to reduce the initial ambitions to a project that he will be able to realize, because it is true that the impossible, no one is bound, as Mr. Legault. But these constant setbacks in the field of academic success are gradually deflating a priority called education, let’s agree.