The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, will be able to make changes to his academic catch-up plan, but not right away.
“I will have a much more complete picture at the beginning of February and, at that time, we will adjust if necessary,” he said during a press scrum in Sherbrooke on Wednesday.
Mr. Drainville was reacting to the fears, relayed in the media, of parents of children with learning difficulties who are unable to obtain help from a tutor.
The CAQ elected official invited the population to wait “a little bit” before declaring the failure of his educational catch-up plan, accompanied by 300 million dollars. “Listen, let’s wait a little bit to have a more complete picture,” he said on the sidelines of a meeting of CAQ deputies in anticipation of the resumption of parliamentary work.
Parents of children selected for catch-up workshops led by teachers, retired teachers or teaching students will be contacted throughout the week, he said, full of “confidence”. “We want the children to catch up as much as possible, to not pay the price of strikes, in any case as little as possible. So, we want to bring them to success with considerable means,” he continued.
One thing is certain, the offer of services “will not be equal everywhere, in all schools,” however, reiterated Mr. Drainville.
For some parents, including Julien Gagné, the minister’s plan, however, seems “abstract”. “I wonder how it will come to fruition,” he emphasizes to Duty. He has not been contacted until now for his seven-year-old son to take part in catch-up activities. “I don’t know if we’re going to be later. »
Mr. Gagné relates that he had his boy do dictations and readings during the strike, so that he would not lose his touch. “I think he stayed up to date,” he adds, about the little one who attends a school in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district.
“Communicate better” with the network
From Thetford Mines, where she is for her party’s caucus, Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy invited the Minister of Education to “better communicate this week” the measures of her catch-up plan. “What I heard was that until last week, the financial rules were not really understood by the network, and therefore poorly communicated by the government,” she said. .
Teachers, for example, don’t know if tutoring preparation hours will be paid — and they should be, according to M.me Rizqy. Right now, “there’s not enough hand raising” among teachers, she agreed. “And if we see that next week, we are not yet able to have teachers, we will have to [que le ministre] react quickly because during this time, the school calendar is moving forward and we have not yet made up a single day,” she lamented.
Minister Drainville refrained from saying whether the mixed reception – even frosty in places – which was given by members of the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE) to the agreement in principle reached between the Quebec government and their union federation could explain the difficulties in recruiting tutors. According to the catch-up plan, they will support students in difficulty outside of normal school hours.
The government offer made to professionals in the education network is not “perfect[e] ”, but signs “very good progress for teachers and staff,” said Mr. Drainville.
With Marie-Michèle Sioui and Florence Morin-Martel