School attendance may be mandatory by law, but more than 3,500 primary and secondary school students are taking their lessons remotely even though they have no health conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID- 19.
According to what The duty has learned, a three-year pilot project set up by Quebec is opening the door to online education for these thousands of handpicked students. To qualify, parents must demonstrate that virtual school is the best option for their children due to a range of circumstances: bullying at school, severe anxiety, behavioral or learning difficulties, autism, giftedness, distance from major centers or participation in sports-study or arts-study programs requiring regular absences from class.
This is a shift from distance education which has been offered only for medical reasons — and with a medical certificate — since the start of the pandemic. With this new pilot project, Quebec now offers the virtual school to “different” children, who do not fit into the mold of the school in the presence. But under strict conditions.
The program allows distance education to “students who are unable to attend school because they must receive specialized health care or social services”, explains a letter from the deputy minister of the Education, Alain Sans Cartier, sent to a virtual school set up under the three-year pilot project.
“The choice to use such distance services in these situations must be based on an analysis of the individual needs for each of the students concerned,” he adds.
The Ministry of Education specifies that approximately 3,500 primary and secondary students are taking their courses remotely under 56 pilot projects. This initiative (from September 2021 to June 2024) is part of the Digital Plan, which aims to “promote the deployment of distance learning (FAD) in primary and secondary education. […] The conclusions of this project will contribute to defining the orientations of the Ministry for the future. »
Académie Juillet, a private elementary school in Candiac, Montérégie, is one of the establishments authorized to expand its offer of online courses under the pilot project. The Academy has created a formal virtual school that accommodates 16 third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade students. They are grouped into a single class. The teacher lives in La Baie, Saguenay. Students reside in 16 different cities.
“It works really well. We see a marked improvement in the motivation and success of our virtual school students,” says Julie Gagné, Assistant Director of Académie Juillet.
“We are realistic, we know that face-to-face is good. Our goal is to hook up students that we were losing in the education network. If we can give them a positive experience for a year or two and then come back to school in the presence, so much the better,” she adds.
Supervised students
Parents of virtual school students are delighted. Vanessa Munoz notes that distance education is tailor-made, “for the moment”, to the needs of her 10-year-old daughter. This slightly autistic student experienced harassment at her neighborhood school in the Laurentians, north of Montreal.
The little girl is autonomous, but needs support in class. However, professional services were sorely lacking in his public school. Vanessa Munoz believes that her daughter is better supervised with the virtual school. She appreciates the availability and kindness of the homeroom teacher, who has time to devote to each of the students.
“My daughter can concentrate on the material to be learned. Regular schools are not suitable for children who are slightly different. If you don’t “fit” into the mould, you don’t have an education that meets your needs”, laments the mother of the family.
Hugo Vézina has also noticed an improvement in the morale of his 9-year-old son since he took all his courses online. The boy was being bullied at school, but “my calls were never taken seriously,” he says. The virtual school also offers better supervision for the boy, who needs close monitoring to succeed, notes the father who lives in Chaudière-Appalaches, south of Quebec.
Although they are satisfied, both parents point out that the fees of $6,795 per year at the July Academy represent a considerable sum compared to free public school. They want the public network to be more open to tailor-made solutions for students with special needs. The virtual school is one of these innovative ideas.
“I see it as a rescue. We have students who were not doing well at school and for whom distance learning is a springboard to come back to face-to-face,” says Maryline Dallaire, the teacher of the 16 students at the July Academy virtual school. .
The emotion can be heard when she says that one of her students, who had great difficulty in reading, can now read instructions given to all the children in the class. Or by evoking this little girl who confided “feeling in her place for the first time in her life” in a school context.
“I have the time to clearly identify the interests of my students. We discuss, we share. I’m so happy when I manage to capture their attention, ”says the teacher in her thirties, mother of three children.
The blind spot of the virtual school is the lack of socialization with real people, and not by interposed screen, believes Maryline Dallaire. “Kids can play with their neighborhood friends, but it’s not like school,” she says.
A temporary solution
Far from being anecdotal, this lack of socialization represents a major shortcoming in distance education, recalls Steve Bissonnette, professor in the Department of Education at TELUQ. Without recess, extracurricular activities and limited virtual interactions, children do not have access to one of the main missions of education — that of learning about life in society.
The professor is well placed to talk about the virtual school: he teaches in a university created specifically to offer courses at a distance. “This model is designed for autonomous and responsible adults, not for elementary school children,” argues Mr. Bissonnette.
He dares to believe that Quebec will avoid the pitfalls of large-scale virtual schools, which are a “monumental failure” in the United States. “Researchers have recommended a moratorium to stop the development of this type of school in the United States, the results are so bad,” he says.
In an ideal world, the virtual school is a “solution of last resort” in a crisis situation such as during successive waves of the pandemic. “Distance education is better than no education at all. If it’s used well and temporarily, I think it has its place. But it shouldn’t become a whim of parents who think it’s better for their child in the long term,” says Steve Bissonnette.
Even bullied students are at risk of being pulled out of school for a long time, he said. “Isolating a child does not allow him to develop the means to deal with his problems. If we take him out of school [en lui enseignant à distance] or if we change schools, the bullying is likely to start again when he returns to society. You have to teach him ways to react so as not to fall back into the same pattern. »