(Montreal) The training of students arriving at CEGEP is not at the level at which it should normally be, a “perverse effect” of the pandemic, estimates the Federation of College Education, which represents CEGEP teachers.
Posted at 11:58 a.m.
Updated at 12:06 p.m.
“Over the past few years, many students have gone through high school with lower expectations. There have been no failures, there are diplomas that have been awarded, but without them reaching the thresholds usually expected. Everything had been put down, “said Youri Blanchet, president of the Federation of Collegial Education (FEC-CSQ), in a press briefing on Monday.
Students who will begin their college studies in the coming days will have completed part of their secondary education remotely due to the pandemic. Already, in CEGEP classes, “it shows,” continues Mr. Blanchet. “We feel a decline in the quality of the student profession,” he explains.
“The ability to study: being able to do research, pay attention in class, take notes. That too is an observation that is shared [par les profs] “, says the president of the union.
As a result, teachers are “arranging to do workshops to give them extra lessons to teach the material,” he says.
The Centrale des unions du Québec (CSQ) and its affiliated unions in the college sector met with the media in Montreal on Monday morning, to argue that the staff shortage does not only affect elementary and secondary schools.
“There are shortages everywhere, and this is also true in the college network,” says Éric Gingras, president of the CSQ.
The union is not able to quantify the extent of the shortage, but assures that in certain colleges, the situation is “very, very worrying”, for example in the computer science, pharmacy or nursing programs. It has happened, says the CSQ, that students have been deprived of classes for a few weeks due to the lack of teachers.
As negotiations approach for the renewal of the collective agreements, the CSQ and its federations are calling on the government to improve the working conditions and salaries of their members in order to create real attractiveness and retention of personnel.
With The Canadian Press