School benches are increasingly deserted with each passing week: Monday, more than one in ten students was absent from class, again an increase compared to the previous week.
Virus season hits hard: As of Monday, there were 158,026 students who were absent from classes, or 12.7% of students in preschool, primary, secondary, vocational training and adult education .
This is 8,000 more young people than the previous week, and significantly more than at the height of the Omicron wave, last February.
At the Quebec Association of School Management Personnel (AQPDE), we say we are “concerned” by the situation. “The holidays are coming and if we look at other years, we expect it to increase after Christmas,” says its president Carl Ouellet, who also says he is worried about “student success” .
In schools, absences seem to come “in waves,” they say among Montreal school principals.
“A principal told me that within a few days she had a third of her pupils absent in her primary school. It must be extremely contagious, it comes in waves. At the time, it was worrying, but after a few days, it came back, ”illustrates Kathleen Legault, president of the Montreal Association of School Principals (AMDES).