The Ministry of Higher Education finally unveiled Friday the long-awaited report made by three experts on the mastery of French in college. Unsurprisingly, it highlights the urgency of acting to try to improve the unsatisfactory success rates in French at CEGEP. Among the main findings, an air of deja vu: compulsory education in Quebec, from preschool to entry to college and even more, absolutely does not guarantee sufficient mastery of reading and writing.
We will soon have to courageously attack this distressing observation: for a student to arrive at CEGEP ill-equipped in French, would this not be a sign that he has crossed the previous networks without having accumulated the necessary baggage? Can we finish his 6e year without knowing how to read? Apparently yes. Can you get a high school diploma without being comfortable in written French? It also seems so.
Discuss the French skills of college students with a college actor, and the actor will roll his eyes at poor high school preparation. Try to understand the French level of secondary school students, and your interlocutor will sigh, pointing out the too many students who have finished primary school without having the basic tools in French. The cycle of deficiencies in French in Quebec should not be analyzed network by network, but rather scrutinized as a whole.
The authors of the report submitted to the ministry in January 2022 — Mastering French in College: Time to Act — have sown 35 recommendations to try to improve the situation, which weighs on success in CEGEP. Indeed, we see that pitfalls in French are among the main causes of abandonment or non-success in CEGEP studies. Statistics show that students who have obtained less than 75% in the single French test of 5e high school are less likely to graduate from college than those who graduated over 75%.
The report’s first recommendation literally confirms the failure of previous school networks, and encourages CEGEPs to teach French. “The committee recommends that the functioning of the language be explicitly taught at the college level and that its teaching be linked to the writing and reading of texts. Since we can no longer take it for granted that the basics of French will be well mastered on arrival at college, is it useful to immediately dive into literature courses if we are not sure that what will be read will be Understood ?
Through the voice of their unions, the teachers said on Friday that this recommendation had neither head nor tail. Learning French at CEGEP? No question, not our role! It is true that this camouflages a vibrant acknowledgment of failure, but it must be admitted that it is consistent with the reality on the ground, against which we cannot fight.
And if we want to understand the roots of this perpetual rout of pupils and students in French, we will also have to add another stone to the analysis: what can we say about the disappointing results of future teachers in the French test, necessary for get their teaching license? To enter the profession, students in the baccalaureate in education take the certification test in written French for teaching (TECFEE), where year after year the success rate on the first attempt of the two-part exam is around … 30 %. It is a real disaster.
A number of relevant reports written by eminences have pointed to initial training as the first area of work to be tackled. The increasingly difficult recruitment of teachers, due to the shortage, unfortunately does not provide the context for raising the general requirements for the teaching of French to future teachers, but this is exactly what we should be aiming for. to manage. It was, in 2008, one of the flagship recommendations of the Ouellon report (named after its author Conrad Ouellon, president of the Superior Council of the French language) suggested before him by Gérald Larose, in 2001, during the Estates General on the situation and future of the French language. Chorus known, did we say?
The importance of protecting French as the basis of our identity and our distinct culture seems to animate the members of the Legault government, who have made this issue one of their main battles, which we welcome. Several projects and committees are active around this noble cause. The work, which we seem to tirelessly resume at the whim of changing governments, has however already been destroyed, and several eloquent reports shelved (the Ouellon report, for example). This is why it is no longer through findings and calls for urgent action that Quebec will finally be able to change the situation, but rather through the initiation of concrete actions on the ground. Room for changes.