Quebec underestimates the future number of students at CSSDM

Quebec does not take temporary immigration into account when it forecasts the number of students who will attend Montreal schools. As a result, the province’s largest school service center is worried about soon running out of space in its secondary schools.

On paper, the Ministry of Education predicts that Montreal schools will experience a drop in students in the coming years.

In fact, it is an “underestimation” which has “significant consequences on medium and long-term forecasts”, we note in a document from the Montreal school service center (CSSDM).

The main problem: Quebec bases its forecasts on children aged 0 to 4, explains Mathieu Desjardins, director of the school organization service, in an interview.

“ [Le Ministère] will get the data from the Régie de l’assurance santé du Québec, a child must have a health insurance number. We have a lot of students who arrive and who don’t have this number. It’s specific to the Montreal region: asylum seekers, temporary immigrants,” explains Mr. Desjardins.

This is how, last year, 2,500 students fell under the forecast radar.

“This year, what worries me is our secondary schools,” continues Mathieu Desjardins. The pandemic has not slowed the growth in the number of students at CSSDM.

“We are implementing solutions that we had not thought of,” says Mr. Desjardins.

He cites the example of Saint-Henri secondary school, which began to overflow during the school year last year. An empty primary school has been converted. “To accommodate new arrivals, we annexed it to the Saint-Henri school, to add around fifteen rooms to the school which was at full capacity,” says Mr. Desjardins.

Now that the subject of temporary immigration is often in the media space, the CSSDM says that the government is starting to take stock of what this means for schools.

“We can see that temporary immigration is practically double that of regular immigration. We must take this into account: these children attend our schools,” says Mr. Desjardins.

“Functional” capacity of schools

Calculating the capacity of secondary schools is not an easy task: each student does not count as one.

For example, as illustrated at the CSSDM, the Pierre-Dupuy secondary school, in the Centre-Sud, has a capacity of nearly 700 students and currently accommodates 360.

“We are told: ‘You have plenty of space, you could fit twice as much,’” says Mathieu Desjardins.

It would be fair, he explains, if each student attended an ordinary class where 29 young people could be seated.

“In reality, this is not the case: I have reception classes where there are 14 students in a group,” illustrates Mr. Desjardins.

A student in a reception class counts for 2.07 students in a regular class. There are six students with an autism spectrum disorder per class.

By weighting the students, the CSSDM calculates that there are 556 of them.

“It’s not true that it’s half empty,” said the director of the school organization service.

This is also the case for Édouard-Montpetit secondary school, where this year we are welcoming 1,361 students. Once “weighted”, the CSSDM counts 1,655 and judges that there are approximately 300 excess students.

However, there is no shortage of space in this school. Everything is well thought out, says director Martin Talbot.

To show us, he guides us at morning break time towards the cafeteria. The bell rings, the students burst into the corridor in a huge wave. About fifteen minutes later, there was no one left. The young people returned to class almost as quickly as they left.

“We are not overpopulated. The school is not full, full,” said the director, while making the distinction between the “maximum” capacity of his school and the “functional” capacity.

He could, he says, open a new so-called regular secondary group now, not without making some adjustments to the timetable.

Because when it comes to opening reception classes or special education classes, we do not count in number of students, but in number of classes.

For these young people in a “vulnerable” situation who have just arrived in the country, having stable premises is essential, says the director. “Can we leave them in the same room with the teacher who says hello to them in the morning and goodbye in the evening? “, he asks.

This year at his school he has four reception classes and five groups of students with autism spectrum disorder.

The growth in the number of secondary school students will not stop in the coming years, says the director of the CSSDM school organization service.

“We are not short of solutions, but we tell ourselves that if the current pace continues for two or three years, we will have problems,” warns Mathieu Desjardins.