The “elitist” programs reserved for the most successful students are increasingly questioned in public schools. A school service center in Quebec is thus launching a vast project so that all its secondary school students have access to a specific project in sports, art or science. A way to iron out the inequalities between advantaged and disadvantaged students.
According to what The duty learned, the Center de services scolaire des Chênes, in Drummondville, is taking major steps to put an end to the “segregation” between students who are doing well and those who are having difficulties. The aim is for all secondary schools to offer all their students special projects that can motivate young people. These profiles in hockey, music or computer science, for example, should no longer be a “privilege” reserved for students with the best grades, but an option accessible to all young people.
“We must break the multi-speed school system, which creates inequalities for the benefit of the most advantaged. We want to welcome all young people in secondary one on an equal footing, ”sums up Lucien Maltais, general manager of the CSS des Chênes.
The service center is inspired by a report by the Superior Council of Education, which concluded in 2016 that the Quebec school system is one of the most unequal in the country. Subsidized private schools and public schools with special projects attract the best performing students in secondary school. Result: students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with difficulties are overrepresented in so-called ordinary classes.
“The result is a form of segregation that leads to a multi-tiered school system. The gap is therefore widening between the environments: certain establishments or certain classes are considered less conducive to learning [les familles qui le peuvent les fuient] and working conditions are more difficult [les enseignants qui le peuvent les fuient également] », Indicates an internal document from the CSS des Chênes dated November 2021.
In this service centre, the success rate of young people in ordinary classes is between 5% and 28% lower than that of groups with special projects, emphasizes Lucien Maltais. Research in the sciences of education concludes, however, that co-education (classes made up of a diversity of students) pulls young people in difficulty upwards without harming those who are more successful.
The CSS des Chênes aims to reduce the costs of joining specific projects. These programs could even be free for young people from disadvantaged families. Admission would be made as much as possible according to the interests of the students, and not only according to their academic results or their athletic or artistic abilities.
On the right track
Stéphane Vigneault, spokesperson for the citizen movement L’École ensemble, is encouraged by this initiative of the CSS des Chênes. “It’s really in this direction that we want to go,” he said.
A recent open letter from 10 personalities, including sociologist Guy Rocher, supports the L’École ensemble movement in its quest for a more egalitarian public school, where all students have access to the same programs, regardless of their academic results or thickness of their parents’ wallets.
These education experts believe that Quebec should take inspiration from the Finnish model, where private schools are 100% subsidized.
“For true equity, it is essential that special projects are free and available to all students. The selection tests create performance anxiety: children are told from the fifth year of primary school that they will miss their life if they are not accepted in private school or in a particular project, “says argue Stéphane Vigneault.
The neighborhood school first
This initiative concerns “concentrations” or “profiles” in sport or the arts that are integrated into the school timetable. But these are not the more advanced “sports-studies” or “arts-studies” programs, where students take their lessons in the morning and do their sport in the afternoon. These sports-study or arts-study programs will remain. The CSS des Chênes provides that a form of selection will remain in place for this type of program: candidates must be able to evolve in a competitive sport while passing their courses, recalls the DG of the service center.
The project also aims to ensure that students attend their neighborhood school as a priority to facilitate school organization and reduce transport costs. Consultations conducted by the CSS des Chênes confirm the support in principle of all groups—parents’ committees, school staff and school principals—for the review of the secondary school service offer. The consultations are continuing, insists Lucien Maltais. The revised service offer could come into effect in the fall of 2024.
An inconvenient change
A similar project, but on a smaller scale, is raising concerns at the Center de services scolaire de la Rivière-du-Nord (CSSRDN), in the Laurentians. To cope with significant population growth, the service center decided to encourage students to attend neighborhood schools.
Five so-called regional programs, which welcome students from all over the territory of the CSSRDN, will become local. These are concentrations in hockey, football, cheerleading, computer science and music. Secondary schools that offer these concentrations should give priority to students from their neighborhood. If there are places left, students from another neighborhood may be admitted, but parents will have to pay for their child’s transportation, explains René Brisson, general manager of the service center.
“We want all school administrators to survey parents and develop profiles. We want to encourage the participation of young people, that they find their passion, stay motivated and succeed,” he says.
Parents of students lament that by multiplying the profiles in schools, the caliber of sports will inevitably decline. Because the talent will be diluted between several schools. “Offering more sports to more students is very good. But children enrolled in regional programs need to compete at a high level,” argues André Daoust, who created a Facebook group of parents opposed to the CSSRDN decision.