This text is part of the special Back to School notebook
The entire education sector received a blow to the heart in May 2024, when the 2023 results of the ministerial reading exams for the 4th grade were unveiled.e primary school year. More than a quarter of students failed their exams, roughly double the number from the previous year (13.7%). This is a much worse result than in 2019 (19.4%) and 2018 (17.7%).
In the eyes of Marie-Hélène Giguère, professor in the Department of Specialized Education and Training at UQAM, we should perhaps observe a “bubble” effect that reflects the repercussions of the pandemic on the cohort that entered elementary school in 2019. “We will see next year if the strikes of fall 2023 will have had consequences.”
Despite these special circumstances, this result remains worrying. “Those who struggle with reading at the end of primary school will carry this difficulty with them for a long time,” she warns. These problems are one of the main indicators of dropping out of school at the end of secondary school, with all its repercussions: precariousness, poorly paid and unproductive jobs, lack of adaptability to change and related impacts on health and family.
But, according to the researcher, something is seizing up in the school machine from secondary school onwards. “Reading is taught quite well at the primary level, but the higher levels take reading and writing for granted, when in reality, we learn to read and write throughout our lives.”
All educational systems must deal with some setbacks in reading. And this is even though, paradoxically, young people have never read and written so much outside of school through digital technologies, according to Olivier Dezutter, a specialist in French didactics at the Faculty of Education at the Université de Sherbrooke. He has just been awarded a Research Chair on School Literacy that will examine the teaching techniques and reading habits of hundreds of students in some forty establishments of the Val-des-Cerfs school service centre in 29 municipalities in the MRCs of Brome-Missisquoi and Haute-Yamaska.
This team will study both reading and writing skills in French, but also their connection with other subjects. It will also give students a voice through five interviews annually to determine their actual reading practice, particularly outside of school, in order to understand what motivates them, explains Mr. Dezutter. “Between the ages of 10 and 13, the relationship to reading changes radically in young people’s minds. Our hypothesis is that there is a gap, or even a rupture, between school reading and the reading habits of young people outside of school,” adds the holder of the research chair.
Best organization
According to the two researchers, there is no need to reinvent the wheel: it is rather a question of tightening up professional development, of better coordinating the stakeholders and of strengthening the links between the school and the rest of society.
As a professional development specialist, Marie-Hélène Giguère believes that we can do much better in this area. “After primary school, reading and writing become specific to each subject area through its vocabulary, the structure of texts, the way of presenting ideas, the notes. Each teacher has integrated this unconsciously. For them, it is a matter of clarifying their process explicitly so that they are able to transmit it to students. This is called “disciplinary literacy” and the schools that practice it obtain excellent results,” she explains.
The school organization also needs to be reviewed, she believes. Educational advisors and special education teachers are too often misused, particularly where there are too many non-legally qualified teaching staff. “We need complete teams, including school management, where everyone has the specific knowledge to properly plan and structure reading instruction. And that’s not the case right now,” says the specialist. “It takes a village to raise a child, but it takes an entire school to teach reading, not just good teachers.”
The promotion of reading must also be reflected in budgets, argues Olivier Dezutter. However, the researcher notes that all school libraries are funded equally, while the needs are obviously not the same in localities without a municipal library. “And what’s more, I saw a school close its library to make room for new classes!” he says.
Olivier Dezutter, who worked as a teacher for 15 years in Belgian schools before becoming a researcher in Quebec, also invites us to rethink the link between school and society. The Quebec education system, he notes, makes very poor use of authors, lyricists, screenwriters and journalists, and more generally all those who make a career out of writing. “Many young people who have difficulty writing are astonished to discover that great writers have to correct themselves three or four times.”
This content was produced by the Special Publications Team of Dutyrelevant to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part in it.