Most of the approximately 95,000 members of the Fédération des syndicats de l'enseignement (FSE-CSQ) will benefit from salary increases of between 20% and 24% over the next five years if they agree to the industry agreement presented to them days. The document also proposes an annual injection of $74 million to improve class composition in the public school network.
Le Devoir received a copy of this proposed agreement, which was concluded on December 22 by the FSE-CSQ with the Legault government. The association began sending it out to its various member unions across the province on Monday for presentation to their members during general meetings that will last until mid-February.
The document reports an average increase of 4% in the salary scales of teacher members of the FSE-CSQ, in addition to the planned increase of 17.4% for all 420,000 members of the Inter-Union Common Front. The average increase offered to members of this association is therefore 21.48%.
The document stipulates that three out of 16 salary levels, i.e. the first two and the last, will see a salary increase of less than 20% within five years. In fact, the final pay scale will not increase at all, but will be limited to the 17.4% increase negotiated by the Common Front. A Level 6 teacher's salary was expected to increase 24.5% to $73,394 by the 2026-2027 school year. A teacher at the lowest salary level would then receive an annual salary of $109,121.
This upward revision of FSE-CSQ teacher salaries by an average of 4% alone would ultimately represent an expense of $130 million per year that would ultimately be borne by the state, the document states.
Teachers can also benefit from an inflated hourly rate of 33% if they cover in addition to their usual duties, providing them “a form of recognition for additional time,” the proposed agreement says.
Class composition
The proposed agreement also includes a total of $74 million per year to improve class composition in the public school network. This sum includes, among other things, 18.62 million per year, which will be used to finance the opening of the group as well as the hiring of primary school teachers and other resources. The same amount of funding is provided for five-year-old kindergarten classes.
An amount of $24.83 million will be used to support the composition of the secondary school system, particularly by increasing overtime of special education teachers, opening new student groups and financing the hiring of teachers.
The sector agreement also envisages spending $5.71 million to enable the establishment of various services aimed at improving educational offerings for students from migrant or allophone backgrounds – whose native language is neither French nor English. The money will be used in particular to finance the expansion of reception classes and semi-open classes.
As proposed by the Legault government, the agreement calls for the addition of the equivalent of 4,000 full-time classroom assistants in state-paid hours who will support elementary school teachers, including in five-year kindergarten classes. A measure whose cost is estimated at $210 million per year.
However, the FSE-CSQ agreement does not include certain bonuses provided for in the Autonomous Education Federation agreement. The latter's agreement, a copy of which was obtained by Le Devoir, provides for a bonus of $4,000 to be paid to teachers whose class consists of 60% of struggling students. In secondary schools, this bonus is granted if 50% of students have difficulties. The agreement also stipulates that this individual bonus will increase to $8,000 if a school is unable to offer support measures to the teacher who finds themselves in this situation – for example, by giving them access to teaching aid to support them.