School is in session for all four main parties
But how reAlistiC Are the proposAls for QueBeC’s eduCAtion system?
Quebec students went back to class last month, just as the province’s political leaders were revving up their campaign bus engines.
While many students returned to crumbling schools and teachers dug into their own pockets to pay for art supplies or even Kleenex for their classrooms, the four main parties unleashed a flurry of promises aimed at improving Quebec’s education system.
From free preschool for fouryear-olds, whether in a subsidized early childhood centre or a prekindergarten class, to free education all the way from the pouponnière to a PhD, all four parties are pledging billions of dollars — including funds to renovate schools.
Sheryl Smith- Gilman, assistant director of the teacher education program at McGill University, said she is pleased to see so much focus on early childhood education, because the evidence shows prompt intervention in the lives of youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds can have a profound effect.
She said whether these efforts take place in a Centre de la petite enfance or pre-kindergarten, the emphasis has to be on quality and access for all children.
“I highly caution that it has to be play-based . ... It should not be to stuff material down their throats,” Smith-Gilman said. “Play-based education comes down to the quality of the teaching.”
The attention education is getting in the 2018 election campaign may be welcome, but it is frequently at odds with the realities facing a public education system that has been starved for so long and manages to function in spite of enormous challenges.
A government report last spring found 55 per cent of the province’s primary schools are in poor or very poor shape, as are 47 per cent of high schools.
There is a shortage of teachers and resource personnel due to the demands of the profession.
That means some children have to start school without a permanent instructor.
In Montreal, a record 1,700 children newly arrived from around the globe registered with the Commission scolaire de Montréal this fall, with more showing up every day.
Since most don’t speak much French or English, this required the establishment of more than 270 classes d’acceuil to help ease these youngsters into the school system, according to Le Devoir.
Some of the issues dogging schools are due to circumstance. Others are a result of historic neglect. But others can be pinpointed to the Liberal government’s austerity measures early in its mandate. While the education budget was never technically reduced, increases were kept below their natural growth level, which often had the effect of outright cuts. Specialized support staff were laid off and some schools couldn’t buy new books for their libraries.
Pascale Grignon, a spokesperson for Je protège mon école publique, recalls it as a sombre time. More of a movement than a group, JPMEP organized human chains around schools to give voice to the public outrage over the budget compressions.
The last few provincial budgets have reinvested in education, but Grignon said the system is still rebounding.
“We’re coming from a long way behind, because after there were those terrible cuts three, four years back, we’re still feeling the effects of them,” said Grignon, who has one child in Grade 1 and another in Grade 6. “It’s not just putting a Band-Aid on the bobo; we have to go in and clean the wound.”
Grignon said the children who were in kindergarten or Grade 1 when the cuts took place were the hardest hit. Not only did they miss out on help at a crucial age, but when the government started to put resources back in classrooms again, they targeted them at the youngest students in order to have the greatest effect. So those who were in Grades 3 or 4 by then missed out again.
“Those children who were in difficulty in first grade and didn’t get identified or diagnosed, the children who just needed a little extra hand up, they fell behind. We’ve had situations where kids arrive in Grade 3 without being able to read,” said Grignon. “And now as they get older, they fall even further behind. Those children are going to feel the effects of those cuts throughout their entire lives.”
She calls the kids who are in the upper grades of primary school now and who will soon head to high school the “abandoned generation.”
While it is good to see the political parties making so many promises aimed at children and education, Grignon says, there needs to be stable, permanent funding for public schools in order to avoid this kind of harm in the future.
“It should now be clear to them that education is among the basic expectations Quebec voters have for their government,” she said. “But in terms of the promises, they’re here and there, left and right, all over. It’s not clear what they mean when they say they want to valorize the profession of teaching.”
Sylvain Mallette is perhaps even more cynical about the commitments the political parties are making on education. The president of the Fédération autonome de l’enseignement, the 38,000-member teachers’ union, Mallette said he has seen too many promises in too many election campaigns not to be cynical.
“There’s an avalanche of measures being proposed, but are any of these measures going to improve our public schools, or are they just being announced to score electoral points?” he said. “What I see is a lack of vision.”
The FAE recently released a survey of Quebecers’ attitudes toward education, conducted by Léger. It found that 88 per cent have confidence in teachers; 86 per cent believe the profession of teaching should be accorded more value; 89 per cent think teachers should be freed from administrative tasks; and 89 per cent are of the opinion that there should be more specialized classes for students in difficulty.
Mallette said these should be the real issues that leaders vow to tackle during the campaign.
“We need to get out of the logic that to have accessible public schools, all students need to be integrated into ordinary classes,” he said.
“We have to open more specialized classes instead of this notion of inclusion at all costs.”
Despite talk of better pay for young teachers, Mallette said the plans on the table wouldn’t do anything for veteran instructors. What teachers need, he said, is better work conditions, support and respect.
“Do we ask nurses to come to work with their own syringes and bandages for the patient that we asked them to pay for out of their own pockets?” he said. “It makes no sense, and yet Quebec asks that of teachers. Teachers have always bought their own stickers to put on the students’ work, but now I have members who go to garage sales, who go through their own basements looking for basic materials for their classes — books and toys and furniture and art supplies.”
Smith-Gilman agreed that teachers deserve more recognition for the crucial role they play in moulding the next generation.
“We all know that teachers aren’t paid well enough, and perhaps it would attract more quality candidates to the profession,” she said. “And let’s face it: recognition comes down to salary sometimes.”