During the fall election campaign, the Committee for the right to schooling of the Ligue des droits et libertés – Quebec section called on the various parties to find out their plans with regard to the issues of partial schooling and dropping out of school. with a disability or with adjustment or learning difficulties (HDAA).
Mr. Bernard Drainville, Minister of Education, the party you represent is the only one not to have answered us. This silence is of great concern to us.
An underestimated phenomenon
HDAA students represent 20% of students enrolled in public schools in Quebec. Over the past 20 years, a growing number of these students have been partially enrolled or dropped out due to a decision by the school, a school service center (CSS) or a school board (CS) . We don’t know for the moment the number of students thus excluded, but we know that this phenomenon gives rise to very frequent complaints of discrimination at the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (CDPDJ).
In 2021, the Ministry of Education published a report counting nearly 1,500 students “in complex situations” who experienced service failures during the year. However, this figure only provides a partial view of the situation. A serious limitation is that it does not include students enrolled part-time or those who have been withdrawn from school for a more or less long period when this withdrawal is included in their intervention plan.
Devastating effects for students and their families
The dropout and partial enrollment of HDAA students has devastating effects for excluded students and their families. In 2018, the CDPDJ revealed that nearly 40% of these students “leave secondary school without a diploma or qualification, while only 8.7% of so-called regular students experience the same situation”.
Parents, on the other hand, must take care of their child during normal school hours. Alternatives are often expensive; only those with sufficient financial means can afford them, which contributes to increasing inequalities and the exclusion of disadvantaged HDAA students who accumulate vulnerability factors.
The obligation of documentation for the respect of rights
However, section 36 of the Education Act provides that the school’s mission consists of “instructing, socializing and qualifying students”, “respecting the principle of equal opportunity”, “all by making them able to undertake and succeed in a school career”. The Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, for its part, prohibits discrimination based on disability in access to public education.
These rules are binding on the government, the CSSs, the CSs and the schools. They require, first and foremost, to document the phenomenon of partial schooling and dropping out of school by collecting data in a regular and systematic way so that we can, first of all, understand it, evaluate it and then develop appropriate responses that comply with the Education Act and the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
Already, in 2018, the CDPDJ called for recurring data collection that would allow the government to produce a report every five years on the situation of HDAA students. These exhaustive data are currently non-existent.
Quick and concrete measures
As the new Minister of Education, it is imperative that you make the partial enrollment and de-schooling of HDAA students a ministry priority. We challenge you personally as well as all the deputies of the National Assembly so that this issue be the subject of a question and an answer in the chamber as soon as parliamentary proceedings resume in 2023.
We call for concrete and rapid measures:
That a complete and precise status report on the partial enrollment and dropout of HDAA students be produced by the MEQ as of winter 2023.
That these data include students for whom partial schooling or dropping out is included in the intervention plan and that they be openly accessible.
That a regular and long-term mechanism for compiling and publishing data on school drop-outs and part-time schooling so that trends can be monitored be put in place by the end of spring 2023.
This production of data must be accompanied by a global reflection with the various stakeholders (school staff, administrators, parents, students, health and social services organizations, school transport managers, etc.) to ensure access to school for all HDAA students, as well as schooling conditions that meet their profiles and needs.
In the short term, your department must develop and implement an action plan to significantly improve the situation in the coming years.
These actions are necessary to ensure access to public education without discrimination for HDAA students in Quebec.
* Also signed this text:
Christine Vézina, member of the committee for the right to education and associate professor at the Faculty of Law of Université Laval
Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan, member of the committee for the right to education and associate professor at Carleton University
Marie-Noëlle Béland, member of the committee for the right to education
Antoine Pellerin, member of the committee for the right to education and assistant professor at the Faculty of Law of Université Laval
Gabriel Bergevin-Estable, member of the committee for the right to education and father-in-law of an autistic teenager
Typhaine Leclerc, member of the committee for the right to education and mother of a child who lives with trisomy 21
Patrice Lemieux Breton, member of the committee for the right to education and father of a child who lives with trisomy 21
Maxim Fortin, coordinator of the League of Rights and Freedoms — Quebec section
Véronique Tremblay, Executive Director of Autisme Québec