It was a freezing night in December 2018, two months after the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) came to power. Jean-François Roberge, new Minister of Education, met voters in a microbrewery in his riding, in Chambly. He repeated the Caquista promise to prioritize education: “My friends, we are at the start of something. We will make changes, but it will disturb, I guarantee it. The more you arrange, the more it bothers! “
The minister was right. He made changes. Even if it means sometimes jostling the network. With less than a year before the fall 2022 elections, the Legault government can say that it has kept its word by respecting the majority of its commitments in education. He is preparing to make another promise come true by unveiling his improved version of the Student Ombudsman next week, an institution he has long criticized.
Minister Roberge claims to have raised the bar after years of carelessness, but his opponents argue that the main reforms of the CAQ – 4-year-old kindergartens, abolition of school boards and lowering the school tax – have missed the target. The pandemic crisis has also weakened the Minister of Education, considered by the opposition parties as one of the weak links in the government. They are calling for his resignation and intend to do everything possible to bring him down within a year.
A recent debate on the theme of education in the National Assembly has taken on the appearance of a dress rehearsal for the next election campaign. Members of the opposition trio in education – Marwah Rizqy, Christine Labrie and Véronique Hivon – hammered for two hours the reasons why Jean-François Roberge would be “more useful by returning to primary school”.
These vigorous exchanges showed – once again – the fighting spirit of the Minister. This founding member of the CAQ, protected by François Legault, retains the confidence of the Prime Minister. Casually, Jean-François Roberge is emerging as one of the most sustainable education ministers, after three years in office – we have to go back to Michelle Courchesne in 2007-2010 for such a long reign in this broken ministry. -neck.
In the entourage of the Minister, we defend tooth and nail the results of the first three years of the Caquist mandate, turned upside down by the pandemic : record budgets for building and renovating schools, historic agreements to increase teachers’ salaries, addition of two compulsory breaks per day, supervision of costs charged to parents, funding of two cultural outings per year for each student, increased food aid , creation of 629 specialized classes, reform of the Ethics and Religious Culture course, increased offer of extracurricular activities, massive purchase of computers and digital tablets, educational success plan of 110 million …
“When we got there, we found the house messy, messy mess. There had been years and years of carelessness, of carelessness. We managed on a short-term basis, without having too much ambition, without having too much of a plan, ”Minister Roberge told the National Assembly.
It is true that the liberal austerity of the years 2014 and 2015 hurt education, with the budget cuts to hire speech therapists or orthopedagogues, to renovate schools and even to buy books: “There is no a child who will die of that, ”had launched the ephemeral minister Yves Bolduc.
Criticized priorities
The Legault government has been hyperactive, but its efforts have been in vain, according to opposition parties. The Rizqy-Labrie-Hivon trio says the education system is doing worse than before the arrival of the CAQ.
“The minister has never been able to set the right priorities,” said Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy. 4-year-old preschools might have been a good idea in an ideal world, but the creation of these hundreds of classrooms has compounded the shortage of staff and space, she says. It is a bad idea to add thousands of children to a network that could not adequately support students already in class due to lack of staff.
Without denying the shortage, the Minister of Education is instead focusing on the 11,200 additional children who have a place in kindergarten. It has more than tripled the number of 4-year-old kindergarten classes. “In addition, they have access to training according to the new cycle-program which was carried out by experts in the development of preschool children,” said Jean-François Roberge.
Given the warnings from the community, Minister Roberge should have stood up to Prime Minister Legault, who was keen on fulfilling his promise to expand the offer of 4-year-old kindergartens, estimates PQ member Véronique Hivon. “It didn’t make sense that this was the top priority in education,” she said.
Give up 1.5 billion
Solidarity MP Christine Labrie also criticizes the minister for letting the government standardize the school tax, which has resulted in a loss of $ 1.5 billion per year for schools. Jean-François Roberge recalls that the government compensated for this loss by drawing on the consolidated state fund. The CAQ has nevertheless lowered the tax burden on landowners, depriving the network of funds that could have been used to help vulnerable students, deplores Québec solidaire.
A billion and a half per year in lower taxes, that will give the nice sum of 6 billion after four years of Caquist rule, recalls Christine Labrie. She begins to dream: thismoney could have accelerated the renovation of schools, which continue to deteriorate despite record investments announced by the government.
Doubts remain about the quality of the air and water in schools, remind the opposition parties. Minister Roberge is rightly pleased that Quebec is one of the places in the world where schools have remained the most open despite the pandemic, which has made it possible to limit the damage to children. Actors in the school environment are nevertheless wondering whether this accessibility has come at the risk of the health of students and staff: as of November 17, there were 2,476 active cases of COVID-19 in the school network; 473 classes and 18 schools were closed.
Students first
Beyond the ups and downs of the management of the pandemic, the Rizqy-Labrie-Hivon trio criticizes the government for having failed to curb the shortage of all categories of school personnel. More than 30,000 non-legally qualified teachers work in the network. The money is there to hire, but there is a shortage of candidates.
There is also a lack of 500 professionals (speech therapists, psychoeducators, etc.) to support students in difficulty and their teachers. The solution proposed by Minister Roberge raised an outcry: Quebec is ready to pay to send students from the public network who do not have access to specialized support to private clinics.
Jean-François Roberge remains faithful to the principle he put forward in his essay What if we reinvented the school? Chronicles of an idealist teacher, published when he was in opposition. He says he puts the interests of the students first and foremost. For him, public or private matters little, as long as young people have access to services.
The former idealist teacher still has a year to convince voters of the correctness of his choices.