Sunday. Three o’clock sharp. François Legault’s press conference as a trio recalled his famous “1 p.m. masses” during the pandemic.
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Flanked by Minister of Education Bernard Drainville and President of the Treasury Board Sonia LeBel, the trio proudly listed the details of the new collective agreements in education.
The operation also serves to prepare minds for the next “largely deficit” budget, to use the words of the Prime Minister. While insisting that it would result, according to him, from the “massive” investments devoted by his government to the public school network.
Including increased salaries for teachers and professionals in the network, the creation of new positions, etc.
With the CAQ taking a nosedive in the polls to the benefit of the PQ, Mr. Legault is trying to right his rudder. The primary cause of voters’ disenchantment with him and his party being the poor state of public services in health and education, it makes sense.
However, for health, recent surveys show that among the population, skepticism reigns in the face of Minister Christian Dubé’s reform and the creation of a Santé Québec agency.
Rise of the private sector
They also show that citizens are increasingly worried – and rightly so – about the staggering rise in private health services in Quebec.
For education, luck will perhaps favor the runner a little more. Only time will tell. The real problem, however, is of another nature.
Like all those who preceded it for 60 years, the CAQ government is in fact pretending not to see the elephant in the classroom. Or the serious social inequities created by our “three-speed” school network.
In our unique Tower of Babel in Canada, we find so-called ordinary public schools. Public schools with special projects. Private schools highly subsidized by the state, where most elected officials, as if by chance, send their children.
Result: our system is the most unequal in the country. It was not evil “socialists” who said this, but the Higher Council of Education.
Because it is multi-speed, our school network feeds social and economic inequalities instead of reducing them. It slows down social mobility instead of encouraging it.
States general
The exhaustion of teachers and the blatant lack of human and material resources are found especially in so-called ordinary public schools. Which, in addition to often being dilapidated, are overflowing with students with “special needs”.
This is why even the improved conditions and salaries, while absolutely welcome, will not be enough to get the elephant out of the classroom.
As long as Quebec does not provide itself with a single, free and quality school network, therefore without regard to the income and contact networks of parents, so-called ordinary public schools will continue to suffer.
Just like their students who, surprisingly, are also less likely to undertake higher education than the others. This Quebec is not the one we promised ourselves.
This is why we need states general in education. Real ones. Which government will one day dare to do what it must to ensure true equality of opportunity for Quebec’s children?