It is with a written comment of a few lines that the Minister of Education Bernard Drainville reacted to the significant increase in the failure rate in French among students in 5e secondary.
The Press revealed this morning that in almost all school service centers in the province, the failure rate for this writing exam jumped between 2019 and 2022. In some places, half of the students did not obtain the passing grade.
Although these results arouse indignation, the Minister of Education Bernard Drainville refuses to grant interviews on this subject.
In writing, his press officer indicates that the minister is “concerned by these declining results”.
“French is an issue that is particularly close to our hearts. I am aware of the effects of the pandemic on the success of young people and we are working on this specific issue, which is the success of French at school,” Florence Plourde told us.
With the exception of scrums, the Minister of Education has refused all interview requests from The Press since taking office in mid-October.
Monday morning, it was the former Minister of Education Jean-François Roberge who commented on the results of secondary school students in French.
In an interview on Radio-Canada radio, Minister Roberge, responsible for the French language, said he was “worried” about these results.
In Montreal, for example, only 59.1% of students at the Marguerite-Bourgeoys school service center obtained a passing grade last June. This rate was 72.9% three years earlier.
“I think that all Quebecers should be concerned each time there is a negative indicator for French, whether it is the language spoken at home, the mother tongue, the language spoken at work, the mastery of the language by Quebec students, and we must react,” declared Mr. Roberge.
Between 2018 and 2022, Jean-François Roberge was head of the Ministry of Education. He attributed the drop in these results to the fact that schools were closed for several weeks in the pandemic.
“I think that we did our best to mitigate the risks, but it is unfortunately not very surprising that there were impacts on learning,” added Minister Roberge. “Now what you have to do is keep going and make the big catch-up,” he added.