Three-speed school | Better oiling the gears of our education system

Do you think that reducing the number of gears on your bike would make you pedal faster? Certainly not! It’s the same with our three-tier education system – private, public and special-purpose public – that some would like to dismantle.

Instead of believing that everyone should be moving at the same pace, we should better oil the system so that all students can reach their full potential. Action is needed on all fronts to promote equal opportunities in school and reduce the gaps that persist into adulthood. Here are some ideas to achieve this.

Private and public, same fight

To ease the burden on the public network, it would be desirable for the private sector to accommodate the same proportion of students with disabilities or with adaptation or learning difficulties (HDAA).

In secondary school, HDAA students make up 34% of classes in the public sector, compared to only 21% in the private sector, which often has less complex cases.

Some private schools do more. In Longueuil, Collège Charles-Lemoyne welcomes about 40% of students with an intervention plan, which does not harm the graduation rate. In Gatineau, a third of students at Nouvelle-Frontière high school have an intervention plan.

We developed the Victoria program, which groups about twenty students in the same class, to give them the tools to reintegrate into regular groups after two years. And it works!

These are great initiatives which prove that the private sector can make its fair contribution.

Let’s give the private sector the means to act, which gets a pittance for HDAA children (32 million for private schools and 93 million for private schools specializing in educational adaptation), while the public network receives additional allocations of 3.7 billion.

But let’s make sure that the private sector takes as many HDAA children… and keeps them until the end. It’s too easy to throw students out when difficulties arise. Difficulties that the public sector will have no choice but to manage.

Lowering the income barrier

A child who has the talent and motivation to study should not be held back in his ambition by his family’s lack of income.

Subsidized private schools are allowed to charge up to $4,607 per year for elementary school and $5,902 for secondary school. But very few schools charge the maximum allowed by Quebec. The average is about $1,000 lower.

Many families cannot afford it. Private school foundations allow about 7% of young people to benefit from a scholarship. And international public schools also allow the most talented young people to access an enriched curriculum.

That said, we could consider a form of tax credit, modulated according to the parents’ income, like the credit for childcare costs. This would encourage inclusion in private schools.

Oxygen to public managers

The public also needs oxygen. What if we revised the salaries of directors? What if we gave them real autonomy?

Their compensation has not changed since 2022, due to lack of negotiation. A principal earns between $90,000 and $142,000, depending on their experience and the size of the school. And an assistant principal earns between $78,000 and $105,000.

This is less than in the private sector, where the directors of the largest schools make $200,000 on average, according to a detailed analysis by our colleague Francis Vailles.¹.

But surprisingly, that may be less than the salary of teachers, who earn $103,000 at the top of the pay scale.

On this account, you really have to be motivated to become a boss, with fewer holidays and more responsibilities.

Beyond salary, managers also need real autonomy. Anchored in their environment, they are best placed to adapt to needs. By centralizing decisions excessively, we clip their wings.

The test Reflections of a school principal tells the story of a principal who had been given a large budget to implement an anti-bullying plan. Since her school already had a very effective plan, the principal wanted to use the money to fix toilets that had been broken for two years. She was refused, because the money could not be transferred. How stupid.

Closing the gaps, from the cradle

Gaps between children often appear very early in life, before kindergarten and sometimes before birth.

Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman has shown that the best way to reduce these gaps – which have long-term socio-economic impacts on individuals and society as a whole – is to intervene early in disadvantaged families.².

In this sense, early childhood centres (CPEs) are an excellent initiative. However, the educational quality is not always up to par, without the Ministry of Families monitoring it, as the Auditor General denounced³. And children from disadvantaged backgrounds are not the ones who benefit the most. They must be encouraged to do so.

The sooner we act, the better! For example, the OLO program, which offers nutritional support to pregnant women, helps reduce the risk of babies being born with a low birth weight and then suffering developmental delays. The Passe-Partout program allows 4-year-old children and their parents to get used to the world of school.

Let’s not forget that parental behavior is the factor that has the greatest influence on children’s success.⁴. Here, a warning is necessary: ​​the vulnerability of children in kindergarten practically doubles among those who spend more than two hours a day in front of a screen… almost one in five in kindergarten.

Reading stories, singing songs, having fun with educational games… In an age where screens are omnipresent, we must not forget that the time spent by parents with their little ones makes a huge difference in educational success.

1. Read “Private Schools: Principals Paid Twice as Much as Public Schools”

2. Check out James Heckman’s report

3. Consult the report of the Auditor General of Quebec

4. Consult a study by ESG UQAM