The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, intends to remind school administrators that they are prohibited from modifying the grades given to students by teachers.
Pressed Friday morning by Parti Québécois MP Pascal Bérubé to require his deputy minister to send instructions to school principals to stop this practice, Bernard Drainville finally agreed.
Not without first asserting that his predecessor, Jean-François Roberge, had put an end to the practice of “grade inflation” in 2019.
An instruction will therefore be sent to school management to “reiterate” that they “cannot change the grade given by a teacher,” he assured.
Pressure would be put on teachers by school management so that they increase the results of students who narrowly failed in certain main subjects, Radio-Canada reported on Friday.
According to union stakeholders and a teacher cited on condition of anonymity, this way of doing things, so widespread that it is called “summer magic,” would serve to ensure a higher graduation rate.
A pressure from above
A phenomenon confirmed by the Montreal teacher, Ismaël Seck, who came to denounce to the National Assembly, alongside the member of Québec solidaire Ruba Ghazal, the abolition of special education classes.
“When the grade is 57, 58, that opens the door to grade challenges from parents. School principals don’t like that. So sometimes, we receive little emails to tell us: can you really fail the student, [à] 55, 54, or can you pass it? “, he explained in the company of several colleagues.
These instructions would come directly from “school management” according to him, but the president of the Montreal Teachers’ Alliance, Catherine Beauvais-St-Pierre, believes that they also receive pressure from above.
This is particularly due to the recent introduction of a “dashboard” by the Ministry of Education where school service centers are compared.
“We know that the general management of school service centers could see their heads roll if the service centers are not managed to the minister’s liking. So, obviously there is pressure that starts from the top and goes down to the teachers so that there is better success,” she argued.