Students of 5e secondary were less likely to pass their French courses in 2022 than before the pandemic. Pass rates in maths and science have also fallen, the most recent Department for Education figures obtained by The Press.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
In 2018, the success rate in the French course of 5e secondary was 91%. In June 2022, it was 87.1%.
To arrive at this rate, the Ministry of Education takes into account the result of the uniform test administered at the end of the year, but also the mark awarded by the teachers. Excluded from this calculation are students who dropped out before completing their secondary studies.
Coming out of the pandemic, these results do not surprise Priscilla Boyer, associate professor in the department of educational sciences at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (UQTR).
“I can’t wait to see if the results for the next few years will be weaker. It’s not true that learning is equivalent when you’re home every other day,” says Ms.me Boyer.
At the height of the pandemic, students in grades 3e4e and 5e secondary school spent several weeks homeschooling half the time.
In French, explains Priscilla Boyer, the pupils of 5e secondary must write an argumentative text. This year, they had to answer the question: “Do connected objects contribute to our well-being?” »
This exam had been prepared in 2020, but was canceled due to the pandemic. In 2022, the Ministry reused the copies already printed “in the interest of eco-responsibility and sound management of public funds [sic] “, explained the director of the certification of studies in a letter sent to the school service centers.
However, certain texts that the students had to read in preparation for their writing “were dated”, says Ms.me Boyer. “The students had to talk about it in the past tense, it may have influenced [le taux de réussite] “, continues the professor.
Because research has shown that the topic of the exam has an effect on the results, says Ms.me Boyer, who gives the example of the 2014 French exam, where students had to answer a question about the elderly.
“The young people struggled to find arguments, they didn’t understand the subject very well, and it was such a challenge that it caused the spelling results to drop,” she says.
The French exam, “a recipe to apply”
French teaching specialist, Suzanne-G. Chartrand hypothesizes that teachers may have spent less time preparing students for this 5-year exam.e secondary.
In schools, prepare for the French exam of 5e secondary school, “it’s not a month anymore, it’s a term! “says M.me Chartrand.
In the past, Priscilla Boyer has taught at this level and also notes that the last year of French in secondary school is “built around this exam” so that students succeed.
“We format the genre so much that it’s a recipe to apply: your first sentence is your subject. The second, your subject posed. But an argumentative text is not always like that, you just have to look at any column in the newspaper,” observes Ms.me Boyer.
If she believes that the single French test is a valuable tool for monitoring the progress of Quebec students’ knowledge, she nevertheless observes that we “lose sight of a certain objective, which is to master French”.
The difficulty of mastering spelling
Suzanne-G. Chartrand believes that in this context, the success rates in French in no way reflect reality. Just look at the students entering CEGEP and ending up in French language help centers, she says.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Suzanne-G. Chartrand, French teaching specialist
“They don’t know how to write a text or minimally organize a thought. In terms of spelling, punctuation, syntax: it’s pathetic! It’s 40, 50% of the students, ”says Mme Chartrand.
The ministerial tests in French show that the spelling component “has always been problematic”, abounds Priscilla Boyer, herself a specialist in spelling.
“How is it that since 1986, it is considered that 50% of young people who leave [du secondaire] do not pass the spelling component, even if they passed the writing test? asks M.me Boyer.
The one who has made spelling her specialty also observes a large gap between the students.
The reality is that it takes more than a 5e high school to learn the language. It ends at university, for those who make it that far. It takes time to learn to spell.
Priscilla Boyer, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières
A drop in math and science
Pass rates in maths and science have also fallen, data provided to The Press by the Ministry of Education.
In regular math, the pass rate dropped by 2.6 percentage points, from 79.9% in 2018 to 77.3% in 2022.
This is also the case in science and technology, where pass rates have fallen from 92.2% in 2018 to 87.8% in 2022, a drop of more than 4 percentage points.
Whether in French, mathematics or science, the success rate in these courses has increased during the pandemic. By combining all the courses that include a uniform test, the success rates have jumped, reaching nearly 92% for all of Quebec.
With Pierre-André Normandin, The Press