Few teachers have responded so far to the call to work overtime as part of the academic catch-up plan, which aims to help students who were deprived of classes during the strikes, according to a survey by the Quebec Federation of educational establishment management (FQDE).
On January 9, the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, announced that he was injecting $300 million to set up after-school tutoring in primary and secondary schools. If teachers were invited to participate on a voluntary basis, no teacher raised their hand in certain schools, reported this Tuesday the Journal de Montréal.
“There are few people who were interested in giving additional time for the moment,” maintains the president of the FQDE, Nicolas Prévost, in an interview with Duty. He draws this observation from the survey sent last Thursday to his members to which 140 of them responded. “We don’t have any regions that were affected more than others. It’s a trend that is quite generalized,” he points out.
For its part, the office of the Minister of Education encourages people not to “draw hasty conclusions” regarding the progress of the catch-up plan. He specifies that a “more complete portrait” from school service centers is expected at “the beginning of February”.
In total, students whose teachers are affiliated with the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE) were deprived of 24 days of school during the strike. Those whose teachers are part of the Common Front have missed 9 days of class.
We “squeezed the lemon”
In a written statement, Minister Drainville’s office reiterates its “call to teachers, but also to school management, to turn to retired teachers and teaching students if necessary.”
However, the president of the FQDE believes that these methods have been used many times recently and that they are no longer fruitful. “We have exhausted this resource so much, I would tell you, over the past year and a half, that we have squeezed the lemon. »
Hence the need to ask existing teachers to work overtime on a voluntary basis, explains Nicolas Prévost. This strategy has not yielded the expected results so far, but the “situation could evolve,” he adds.
Teachers were informed of the details of the catch-up plan only on the day students returned to class, recalls Catherine Beauvais-St-Pierre, president of the Alliance of Teachers of Montreal. “It should come as no surprise that many of them cannot find the time and energy to volunteer. »
She therefore asks to give teachers time “to arrive and put their class in order before making a final report on the measures announced by the Minister of Education. »
The FAE, which represents 66,500 members, has also indicated that it will comment on the situation only when the more complete portrait is revealed in February.
With François Carabin