Since the shortage of teaching staff does not allow it to draw from a pool of infinite resources, the Ministry of Education is basing the majority of its academic catch-up plan on the goodwill of teachers and education professionals who will choose — or not — to extend their workday to help the most vulnerable students catch up after the strike. Even if the plan unveiled Tuesday is very well put together and could really make a difference, it is based on a risky bet: that of the voluntary commitment of a group of employees who have not yet completely emerged from a long standoff with the government.
The content of the agreements in principle accepted just before the holiday break by the main unions in the education sector is not yet known to employees. They must decide on their acceptability by mid-February. We will therefore have to fall back on ingredients such as the passion, commitment and benevolence of teachers so that they accept the overtime imagined by the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville. His proposal for improved tutoring is based on the good faith of a recently mistreated group.
The plan designed by Quebec to compensate for the delay of the 9 to 24 days of strike suffered by students is very solid and covers the essential bases. It provides tutoring outside of school hours, help provided by specialists for children with special needs, specific support in French, free summer courses for high school graduates, financial assistance for organizations that offer school perseverance and catch-up services during the spring break. The changes announced to the exam schedule and delivery of report cards are entirely appropriate. The sum of $300 million released by Quebec will be distributed among some 2,700 public schools, for an average sum of approximately $110,000 per establishment. The government has specified that it will pay more in proportion to the school service centers associated with the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE), where the strike continued. This is indeed an essential condition.
But basing this on the goodwill of teachers in the aftermath of a rather arduous negotiation, and when the main stakeholders do not yet know what they have “won” in the agreement in principle on working conditions, constitutes a spectacular challenge. In a context where the amounts already allocated to tutoring by the government are not entirely spent by the school service centers, due to a lack of staff available to offer the hours of supervision, the government had no other choice but to stretch the weeks of existing people because there is simply no new staff available.
The hiccups of the pandemic, where long weeks of classes were dropped unevenly in all of Quebec’s 3,000 public and private schools, will have made it possible to learn lessons. This time, Minister Drainville announced his recovery plan quickly, on the first day of school, and he should be in office at the end of January. This responsiveness is necessary, because for students with learning difficulties and at risk, who certainly constitute a third of the total student body, each day of attendance and repetition of learning lost translates into a delay. The damage may even be irrecoverable at the end of the secondary course, where the temptation to drop out is greater.
Observers will have noted a delicious irony with the implementation of this success support plan, which finances with public funds a practice that is more than widespread in the private sector. Indeed, how many parents, tired of facing a lack of resources in public schools, have paid for a tutor or a remedial course to prevent their child from falling into failure? In our multi-speed school system, where the private sector generally has a head start over the public, it is the financial means that too often decide who will be entitled to the help outside of school to reinforce learning not included in class. This time, Quebec decrees that it will pay for this practice of out-of-class support. Minister Drainville has committed to stretching the amount of money if the needs, which will be assessed over the next two weeks, are greater than expected. This scenario could even become permanent, why not?
With this plan, teachers and the Ministry of Education are forced to put to the test a new contract not only work but also social, focused on student success. It is a bold bet, certainly, because the wounds of the strike have not yet been completely healed and we do not know how many teachers will raise their hands, but its direction is the right one: it confirms the fact that it is necessary deploy additional resources to help the most vulnerable and that we are not short of inventiveness when it comes to doing everything for academic success.