One might think that the Minister of Education of Quebec, the kingpin of the academic success of schoolchildren, can easily obtain precise data on the results in French of students in 3e primary year. Or that he can get his hands in a click or a phone call on the precise number of teachers missing in schools. Or — let’s dream a little — that he is able to studiously analyze the precise effects of a program on the overall results. To these three hopes, the current Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, can only oppose disappointment or exasperation. No, he cannot get quick answers to his requests. We’ll admit it right away: it makes no sense. But however justified it may be, does this impatience justify going over to omnipotence?
Bill 23, introduced last week by Mr. Drainville, places the Minister of Education on a throne: the throne of efficiency, according to the principal concerned; that of the superpower, according to the detractors of this punchy reform. The pretensions on which the revolution that Bernard Drainville is preparing is based are understandable and justified, because at a time when urgency commands him to act quickly, he everywhere comes up against barriers of resistance, closure or even paralysis. systemic. One would have thought that 1,063 civil servants in the Ministry of Education — according to data published in the last Annual management report 2021-2022 — would make for a most oiled machine, but it doesn’t seem to, because there’s dirt in the pipes. But in the name of consistency, should he concentrate so much power in a single office?
The first objection to oppose to reforms instilling omniscience in a minister is to project a future where the holder of the post could entertain dreams or preposterous projects threatening the balance of the education network. The second is to understand where the impediments come from that are causing the minister to lose patience: if we come to that, it is because everything that was undertaken before has ended in failure, starting with the governance reform of former Education Minister Jean-François Roberge, who abolished school boards.
Bill 23 did not fall from the sky. It is part of a hope for performance and efficiency that Prime Minister François Legault has maintained for ages. In May 2000, when he was Minister of Education, Mr. Legault had displayed his colors in front of the floor of the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal: “I wanted to address with you today a fundamental question for our society: can we use the words performance and efficiency when we talk about education? In Quebec, it seems that there is a taboo on the question of efficiency in education. […] It can change and it must change. He was then negotiating performance contracts with universities and success plans with the primary, secondary and college networks, which created a stir.
It remains to be seen whether the Minister of Education can achieve his goals without applying the steamroller of absolute power, which is scratching the school democracy so dear to the network since its founding, the Parti Québécois MNA and education spokesperson , Pascal Bérubé, being right to note it. It is true that the fog on data in education must be lifted. It is true that it is truly aberrant to know that major reforms in education—that of educational renewal, not to mention it—have been implemented without any real support on the teachings of fundamental and applied research. These are the famous “evidence data”, which Bernard Drainville announces that we will now hear a lot about. Who would dare to ask that we continue to navigate on sight in a department serving 1,370,000 students and spending more than 16 billion a year?
The creation of the National Institute of Excellence in Education (INEE) will make it possible to establish the ministry’s strategies: will this revolution in continuing education, which the minister promises, be his first mandate? It could also make it possible to answer nagging questions, around school adaptation for example: has the integration at all costs of handicapped pupils in difficulty gone too far? However, couldn’t the Superior Council of Education, a creation dating from 1964 and born from the work of the Parent Commission, already fulfill these mandates, in its role as an advisory body? It is difficult to understand here why the INEE must swallow this Council, whose work is oh so precious.
The article-by-article reading of this immense bill will give rise to vigorous debates, as can be predicted from the outset. If a huge breaststroke-comrade is to (still) shake up the education network, it will have to be for the sole benefit of the students and their success.