The Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, is certainly right to say that the biggest challenge facing our school system right now is the shortage of workers (“Teaching assistants will arrive in 100 schools as early as September », May 31, 2022, The duty).
In fact, earlier this year, the government announced that it wanted to hire around 8,000 people into the education network by 2026. That’s good because the “biggest challenge” in reality is the number of dropouts. .
So here’s an idea that’s been tried in other places in North America: the four-day school week.
Of course, the same number of instructional hours per school year would still have to be maintained, but that would give teachers a weekly professional day — usually Monday or Friday.
It seems that adopting a four-day school week saves valuable school funds: just look at transportation costs, electricity bills, and the need for substitute teachers. Proponents of this idea claim that a four-day work week helps attract and retain good teachers.
Students would have more opportunities to participate in sports and extracurricular activities, volunteer and, where appropriate, receive tutoring hours. Dentist and doctor appointments could be scheduled on these days.
Apparently, a shorter school week helps reduce discipline issues, reduces absences, and generally both teachers and students are happier.
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