Great interview with Bernard Drainville | “We are putting in resources like we have never used before”

Shortage of teachers, dilapidated schools, high dropout rate, increasing learning problems among our young people, etc. Do you have the impression that the education network in Quebec is a real mess?

There is a good chance that this is the case.

And that worries the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville.

“The problems are very real and we must tackle them,” he admits. But we must not lose sight of the beauty of what is being done in our schools. »

Next month, it will be a year since Bernard Drainville has been in office. I wanted to meet him to take stock of his priorities and his solutions to the system’s problems. I also sought to better understand his vision.

In his opinion, changing the discourse we have on the network is one of the winning conditions.

“If we cannot find a balance between all the problems for which we seek a solution and, on the other hand, the promotion of the good work that is being done in our schools, if everything that is said and told about education is always what goes wrong, we shoot ourselves in the foot. It’s the dog that chases its tail. It’s the vicious circle. »

In his office, at 16^e floor of complex G, in Quebec, Bernard Drainville raises his voice when he addresses this subject.

At times during our discussion, he also takes short pauses, aware of the value of silences during an interview. Although he became a minister, the theatrical side of his personality, which served him so well on the radio, has not disappeared.

So we’re shooting ourselves in the foot? Explanation: in the midst of a teacher shortage, young potential candidates must be made to understand that a position in the network is not the equivalent of a stay in hell. This is what the minister wants.

The fact remains that we cannot hide the problems either, there are plenty of them. They must be resolved.

“I am not jovial at all,” warns Bernard Drainville, to defuse possible attacks on this subject.

It must be said that the minister learned the hard way, over the last year, that the mammoth of education is not easy to tame. He must have put out more fires than a fireman.

Including those that he himself lit, like when he suggested that the work of a teacher was not comparable to that of a deputy.

“We must take care of the urgent without losing sight of the important. And the important thing is the profound structural changes. Deeper than just the reaction to an episodic or one-off crisis,” he explains.

Among the profound changes he is proposing is Bill 23, the second CAQ reform of school governance.

“We need to have more cohesion and consistency in the way we work together. We need to have a network and not 72 components of a network,” he said, citing the number of school service centers across Quebec.

The bill – controversial – will notably allow him to appoint the directors general of all school service centers. It will also grant him the power to cancel the decisions taken by each of these centers.

However, it is not with this legislation that we will resolve fundamental problems such as the shortage of teachers. The proof is that the Ministry has just assessed that if the trend continues, the situation will continue to deteriorate rapidly.

There will be a shortage of 14,230 teachers in Quebec schools within four years, according to the most recent analysis obtained by the minister. It’s alarming.

This is why Bernard Drainville has come to explore solutions of last resort. This is how we must understand his decision, last week, to launch a debate on the duration of the baccalaureate in teaching. He asked his officials to see if it is possible to take a year off training. We could therefore obtain a patent after a three-year baccalaureate instead of four.

“Currently, I’m in a mode: let’s think outside the box, let’s think outside the box, let’s consider what we may not have dared to consider in the past,” he says, all specifying that new ideas may be put aside if they do not stand up to analysis.

The shortage is therefore a priority for him. But above all, he told me, it is academic success that concerns him. “It’s the most important destination. »

He has in front of him a large white binder, filled with scribbled and highlighted pages, which he uses for question period. He opens it, begins to list the list of diplomas and qualifications available to young people and explains that it is important to “put measures in place” to “be able to maintain and ideally increase academic success”.

He fears that the impact of the pandemic on achievement may be more serious than has already been seen.

I point out to him that an eminent specialist in success, Égide Royer, told me last year that Quebec needs an urgent reform of the special education policy (which supports students with disabilities or difficulties in learning). adaptation or learning). I have the right to a dismissal.

“I must first stabilize my numbers,” he replies.

Bernard Drainville recognizes that the composition of the class is a “very big challenge”. The heaviness of many classes is often cited by teachers and their unions as THE demobilizing factor.

“That’s what I noticed first when I started visiting schools, it hits you in the face. »

He is far from sitting idly by, he pleads. This time, what he lists – but without using his binder – is the string of measures aimed at promoting the attraction and retention of teachers.

From increasing pay to tutoring and mentoring programs, adding classroom aides, and renovating and building “nicer schools.”

Bernard Drainville seems to have made the right diagnosis regarding the network’s problems. And he obviously has good intentions.

But I point out to him that this was also the case for his predecessor, Jean-François Roberge, minister during the first mandate of the CAQ.

And he too multiplied measures in order to resolve the problems.

So what should make us think that this time it’s going to work?

“Listen, we’re putting in resources like we’ve never used before. At some point, you say to yourself: all these investments we are making will end up producing results,” he answers.

In the current context, we just want to believe it.