The Quebec education system is one of a thousand speeds.
Before the strikes, we knew the three main speeds: private, schools with specific educational projects (international, sports-study, etc.), and regular public school.
The latter is the one that faces the biggest challenges: financing, labor retention, dilapidation and obviously class composition. Here we learn that even in adversity, there are some who are luckier than others.
Because, you see, in the coming months and years, a child in difficulty educated in a school whose teachers are affiliated with the FAE will perhaps have fewer services, support and chances of catching up through in relation to a child in difficulty educated in a school whose teachers are affiliated with the FSE-CSQ.
It is complicated? Yes and it’s not over yet.
Let’s add a little extra layer: in the pool of schools affiliated with the FAE, there are schools where teachers have responded to work overtime in order to make up for the backlog accumulated during strikes and schools where teachers do not want to. lift a finger to take part in the generous and very voluntary government catch-up plan.
It is clear that the academic success of these vulnerable children will not only depend on their perseverance and the presence of their parents, it is conditional on a host of elements beyond their control: union affiliation, the will of teachers to work overtime or not, the possibilities of them being identified as “at risk” students, the ability to attract retired teachers or teaching students to tutor, etc.
It’s too much to ask of young people in difficulty. We are playing Russian roulette with their future. The system, including the government and some teachers, has failed these students. He sacrificed them by making them future dropouts. And all this in the name of what? In the name of union activism.