Six Lab-Écoles – these new type of Scandinavian-inspired primary schools – have been built in Quebec since 2017 and they will be the only ones. This is the end of this concept.
Eight years ago, architect Pierre Thibault, businessman Ricardo Larrivée and Pierre Lavoie, who advocates physical activity, launched the Lab-École project, which aimed to build more beautiful establishments, where people can breathe better, and better adapted to the needs of students.
In a press release on the organization’s website, it is indicated that “in the last year, the board of directors made the decision to end the activities of the Lab-École, considering that the mandate has been fully accomplished.”
Discussions have taken place with our partners. The decision is understood and shared.
Excerpt from the Lab-École press release
The Lab-École team specifies that the initial five-year mandate will have lasted eight years. It will end on June 30, 2025.
The entry on the scene of the trio Larrivée, Thibault and Lavoie, to whom the government gave the mandate at the time to imagine these new-style schools, has given rise to its share of headwinds over the years, among other things because it came from outside the education sector.
A Radio-Canada report broadcast on Wednesday suggested that the trio was disappointed with the end of the adventure.
Is there anger or not?
In interview with The PressPierre Lavoie confirmed that the Lab-École team had indeed concluded that its mission had been accomplished. “At the same time, we hoped that our mission would be continued by the State,” “that the spirit of the Lab-Écoles” would survive. Tight budgets in government make him fear that this is not the case.
In The DutyEarlier this month, architects also complained that Quebec imposes overly strict criteria for the construction of its so-called “signature” schools, now favored by the CAQ government. More standard buildings, with almost identical architecture across the province.
On Radio-Canada Wednesday morning, Ricardo Larrivée – who is particularly interested in student nutrition – said he was not disappointed.
But worried, yes, that there is no longer “a monitoring body outside the system, outside the unions, outside all that, which is fair in the interests of children and the education system.”
Mr. Larrivée also explained that he had noticed that in government, as everywhere else, there are on the one hand people of great value, but on the other hand people “who want changes, but not in their department.”
The risk, in his view, is that we fall back into old habits of building schools that are not adapted to the needs of students and neighborhoods.
“Some schools are done in a terrible way,” others, “very close to what the Lab-École proposed,” said Mr. Larrivée.
The construction work continues
At a press briefing Wednesday morning, Bernard Drainville, Minister of Education, stated that the end of the Lab-Écoles project was indeed decided by its founders, and he assured that Quebec is not starting to cut back on the construction or renovation of schools.
“We have 270 construction sites in progress,” he stressed. “About twenty new schools will be inaugurated this fall.”
“The Lab-École delivered the goods” and its good ideas, the minister said, will continue to inspire the design of future schools.
The Lab-École concept has encountered several criticisms along the way.
In The Dutyin 2019, Francis Charlebois and Katryne Ouellet, two lecturers, signed a text in which they said they were “flabbergasted to see how the idea of the Lab-École [était] “In a short time, it has gone from a collective reflection aimed at thinking about the schools of tomorrow to a “lobby” for the well-being of our schools and, by extension, the education of our children.”
The cost of the Lab-Schools, the fact that we were focusing on six buildings while so many others were falling into disrepair, the fact that no Lab-Schools had been built in Montreal, where the schools are particularly old, have also been raised over the years.
With the collaboration of Hugo Pilon-Larose, The Press