Hats off to the Center de services scolaire (CSS) des Chênes, in Drummondville, for having had the courage to face the ever-growing problem of private schools in public schools. The CSS will put an end to selective special projects and proposes to allow all students, regardless of their level, to draw from the offer. Inspirational initiative!
The news was reported in The duty Monday: the CSS des Chênes wishes to offer all its secondary school students a specific project in art, science or sport. Without prior selection. Without additional costs. As a bonus, the center restores the reputation of the neighborhood school and makes residents neighboring the school the preferred service providers for special projects, rather than opening them up on the fly to residents of more distant areas. They will be able to register only if there are places left. But neighborhood children will no longer be turned away from special programs at the local school for lack of high enough marks.
The service center has seen the popularity of its particular programs grow over the years — 32% of students turned away in 2020-2021 compared to 19% in 2017-2018. In terms of academic success, a gap of 5 to 28 percentage points separates the regular groups and the special groups, to the disadvantage of the former. Two parallel universes coexist in the school, outside of any logic of school co-education.
The potential beneficial effects of this project, launched after extensive consultation, are innumerable: putting equal opportunities back at the heart of the school project; restore its title to the neighborhood school, even at secondary level; eliminate long bus journeys for many students; slash the unhealthy competition of public schools among themselves, and of “ordinary” classes against specific projects within the same school; attenuate the race – unhealthy – for performance playing in the minds of children from the end of primary school; reduce the worrying phenomenon of “segregation” in schools.
Segregation, too strong a word? asked the sociologist Guy Rocher in our pages in 2017. “However, this is the dominant characteristic of our school. By physically separating our children […], we trample on the principle of equal opportunity. We, the writers of the Parent report, could never have imagined such a collective resignation. Inspired by such wisdom, the École ensemble movement campaigns for the end of this segregation encouraged by our system, favoring private (subsidized) schools and selective public projects. At the very bottom of the chain, ordinary classes are shunned by parents who do not want them, and by teachers who are reluctant to lead “difficult” groups deprived of the strongest elements. Conclusion: students who would probably benefit the most from special and stimulating projects never have access to these special school paths, and sail towards their regular class, already a little loser, when the school year is barely starting.
The pavement in the pond, it is the Superior Council of Education which threw it in 2016 with its report Refocus on fairness. It evoked “segregation”, this separation of pupils very harmful to establishments located in disadvantaged areas. The report of this advisory body, a sort of moral authority in the field of education given the immense expertise it houses, had struck people’s consciences. In 2020, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations called on Quebec to find out about the “measures taken to ensure equal access to education within the framework of the three-level school system in Quebec, regardless of the economic situation of parents “.
It is not for nothing that we emphasize here the courage of the CSS des Chênes, because it takes courage to decide to straighten out these contortions that the system has undergone over the decades in reaction to the laws of the market. Fierce competition from the private network skimmed the public schools of the best, and they responded by creating their own little private within the public. The public school system, which places equal opportunities at the very heart of its mission, sees itself as a major contributor to the problem. This primordial question of social justice, at the center of the founding Parent report, seems relegated to the second zone, while the selection of students enjoys a certain glory. The world upside down !
This school center is tackling a real restoration of the order of things, in addition to committing to adding resources and supporting the most vulnerable students, who are also eligible with support for these special projects. But the project in itself is fabulous and restores confidence in this public network which really needs it.