A big drop in French, a significant drop in the success rate in science and technology, and, on the contrary, a great success in mathematics: the Ministry of Education’s exams in June will bring their share of concern at the end of a year marked by strikes.
Quebec released the results of the Ministry’s latest exams on Friday. While year-to-year comparisons are difficult due to reduced content over the years—for the pandemic, then because of last year’s strike—the difficulties in French are clear. And private schools are doing significantly better.
Thus, in French, in the public network, the success rate for the writing exam is only 66.9%, down 4.2 percentage points compared to last year, even though the content was lightened due to the strike, which deprived some students of a month of school. The success rate for the same ministerial exam, in private schools, is 83.8%.
In the same French test, the gap in success between boys and girls is 10 percentage points. Boys passed it at a rate of 65.5% while for girls, the success rate is 75.6%.
The office of Education Minister Bernard Drainville says it is “aware that this year has been difficult for Quebec students.”
“We put a catch-up plan in place to minimize the effects of the strikes, but obviously, we see that it had an impact on young people,” reacts Antoine de la Durantaye, the minister’s press attaché. Summer courses for students who failed the ministerial exams were free under this plan, he recalls.
Better results in mathematics
In mathematics, public school students passed the June exam with a rate of 76.6%. This is a jump of 7.5 percentage points compared to the previous year, when only 69% of young people obtained a passing grade in this test.
Here again, students in the private network did significantly better: they passed the mathematics exam at a rate of 90.7%, an increase of 7.6 percentage points compared to the previous year.
In science, the success rate is 70.1% (90.8% for private schools). Before the pandemic, this rate in public schools was 74.4.
“Total laxity” in French
Suzanne-G. Chartrand, a retired professor at Université Laval and founder of the Debout pour l’école! movement, believes that the poor French results have nothing to do with the strike. Rather, in her opinion, they are the result of “total laxity since the 1990s” in the education system, which does not give enough importance to French.
Students, she notes, can write in geography, history, etc., any way they want, without ever receiving feedback or losing marks. Young people should instead be encouraged to write well in all subjects, according to Ms.me Chartrand, and not just in the few texts they will write in their French class.
She also notes that the success rates would be even lower if, in the correction, fewer points were awarded to the “discourse” aspect for which, for months on end, students learn “like a recipe” to write an argumentative text constructed exactly according to the model expected by the Ministry of Education.
By putting the recipe into practice, they can therefore collect enough points to obtain a passing grade, even if their spelling, syntax or vocabulary are catastrophic.
Égide Royer, professor at the Faculty of Education at Laval University, notes that we still spend $3.6 billion annually on services for students in difficulty, without having better results.
“The policy for students in difficulty goes back 26 years. What is the Ministry of Education waiting for to update it?” It is urgent, he says, that the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education “get together” and think about these issues.
Analyzing the success rates, it is said that, although low, they are still high when we consider that no less than one in three students in secondary school has an intervention plan (for students in difficulty).
Mr. Royer finally recalls the statistics given to The Press by Marie Montpetit, new President and CEO of the Fédération des cégeps: one in four students fails their first French course at CEGEP.
The poor results in French in the ministry’s exam, mainly in public schools, should not surprise the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville. Already in 2023, he announced that, given the insufficient quality of French, a consultation with experts would be undertaken. It should result in a new French program for the 2025 school year.