Teachers, you won’t like me. Or at least, you won’t like the comparisons between Quebec and the other provinces regarding education.
Many nuances must be made, but in short, here is the observation. Education spending per student is higher in Quebec than elsewhere, despite lower teacher salaries.
The reason ? Elementary and secondary teachers spend much less time in the classroom teaching than in other provinces, so many more staff are required to provide the same services.
These comparisons require nuance, I repeat, but the portrait drawn from Statistics Canada data is intriguing to say the least, in context.
First, Quebec comes in 2e ranking for the money spent on primary and secondary education in Canada, all things considered. The expenditure per student is $17,411, or 12% more than the Canadian average. Ontario is at $15,034 and Alberta is at $14,467. Public and private are included1.
According to my research, one of the reasons explaining the gap is the share of spending devoted to the renovation and construction of schools, greater in Quebec than anywhere else, probably due to catching up.
However, even removing this gap attributable to capital expenditures, expenditures per student remain higher than average, rising to approximately $16,000, compared to the Canadian average of $15,600.
Another nuance: the Quebec data includes vocational training and general adult training, specifies Statistics Canada. Primary care services in Quebec would also be included, which is less common elsewhere.
The fact remains that the great effort made by Quebec is surprising, given the lower salaries of teachers for the same typical training. At the peak, after 13 years, a full-time teacher in Quebec earned $88,652 during the 2021-2022 school year, compared to an average of $96,464 in Canada, a difference of 8.1%.
The gap narrowed the following year – not yet published by Statistics Canada – as teachers in Quebec obtained raises allowing them to reach $92,027 at the top, while Alberta and Ontario experienced losses. budgetary restrictions.
This lower remuneration, therefore, should result in lower spending per student in Quebec, but this is not the case. How is it possible ?
The answer seems to lie in the amount of time teachers spend in class. In Quebec as in the rest of Canada, elementary school students must receive a fairly similar number of hours of instruction (900 hours in Quebec)2.
The problem is that teachers spend much less time in class than elsewhere. At the elementary level, teachers’ teaching time in class is 738 hours per year in Quebec, compared to 878 hours in British Columbia and 895 hours in Alberta, for example.
The gap is 21% with Alberta in elementary school and it rises to 46% in lower secondary school (612 hours in Quebec compared to 895 in Alberta).
The difference means that more staff are needed in Quebec to offer the same number of hours of classes to students, according to Statistics Canada data.
Another way to draw the same conclusion: the number of students per teacher is smaller in Quebec. The ratio is 11.1 in Quebec, compared to 13.5 in Ontario and 16.7 in Alberta. The Canadian average is 13.3 students per educator3.
If Quebec had the same student-educator ratio as Ontario, approximately 17,000 fewer full-time teachers would be needed here.
Once again, detailed data analysis requires nuance. Although Quebec teachers spend less time in class, they work the same number of hours at school as elsewhere and even a little more (1,280 hours per year, compared to 1,200 hours in Alberta), according to Statistics Canada.
Based on this observation, we must question the organization of work. Teachers spend a lot of time at school doing things other than teaching in their classrooms, more than elsewhere in Canada, according to the data. At 1er secondary school, teachers spend only 48% of their time in the classroom, compared to 75% in Alberta.
Do they do more extracurricular activities than elsewhere? Course preparation? Individual follow-ups? Meetings? Corrections? Periods of supervision (which they often hate)?
Is out-of-class time underestimated elsewhere in Canada and more conventional in Quebec?
Another element to consider: the heaviness of so-called regular classes for the public, especially in secondary school. Could it be that the skimming of private schools and special schools (international, sports, etc.) requires overall more resources, ultimately, for the entire network, public and private?
This unique aspect of Quebec, where there are many more private schools than elsewhere in Canada, is at the heart of the negotiations. Teachers are demanding more resources for classes where there are heavier cases, or even the creation of a greater number of specialized classes. The government replies that there is a shortage of personnel.
In short, despite the nuances, the comparisons do not indicate that the Quebec education system is underfunded, on the contrary. Unless our children are much more difficult than elsewhere… or the organization is deficient…
1. Expenditure per student also includes fees paid privately by parents.
2. Quebec is in the low average at primary level (900 hours per year compared to 924 for the Canadian average). In secondary school, this instruction time in Quebec remains at 900 hours (at the age of 14), and the Canadian average drops to 907 hours. The Quebec-Canada gap is explained in particular by the fewer number of school days (180 in Quebec compared to 182 in Alberta and 187 in Ontario).
3. This calculation is made, among other things, from three Statistics Canada databases on educators (37-10-0153-01), the proportion of part-time work among educators (37-10-0153-04 ) and the number of students (37-10-0153-01), all in the public sector.