Quebec’s student population urgently needs to be addressed, says the Autonomous Federation for Education (FAE), which says it’s the most pressing problem in education. The “source”: Government funding of private schools, teachers union says.
Posted at 12:57 am. Updated at 05:00.
In an editorial interview with La Presse, the President of the Autonomous Educational Federation (FAE) calls for public schools to be “a social project”.
“We hear the minister [de l’Éducation, Bernard Drainville] Tell us that private school is the free choice of parents. It is the free choice of the parents who have the means and the students who are doing well to get there,” replies Ms. Hubert.
And if “it doesn’t work.” [dans le réseau privé]”The students have returned to the public network,” she adds.
And with special education projects that “often end up” selecting the best students and contributing to the skimming, ordinary classes suffer, the FAE laments.
Last week, in an interview with Le Devoir, the education minister assessed that “the three-speed school thesis has an ideological bias” before finally classifying it as a “conceptual bias”.
In an interview with La Presse last January, the minister said that 44% of Quebec students were involved in a specific project in high school and stated his desire to multiply that number in public schools.
Mélanie Hubert says she is not against concrete projects, but calls for the removal of the barriers that prevent certain students from joining, “students in great difficulty, who are in classes that are overburdened with students like them”.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, ARCHIVE LA PRESSE
Mélanie Hubert, President of the FAE
That’s what we don’t want. The system escapes [ces élèves] and it is approved from above, by the Ministry itself.
Mélanie Hubert, President of the FAE
“We’re not creating a disaster scenario,” says Daniel Gauthier, FAE’s vice president of industrial relations. “The composition of the classes is currently slowing down and jeopardizing the learning of all students,” he says.
The FAE’s position is clear: Quebec funding for the private sector must stop and social diversity in the classes “is key”.
One of the causes or aggravation of this problem is the funding of private schools and the fact that parents can choose other paths in secondary school.
Daniel Gauthier, Vice President of Industrial Relations at the FAE
The FAE is calling for more specialized courses to be opened to the public. In secondary schools, 32.8% of students attending public school are disabled or have social maladjustment or learning disabilities (EHDAA). In the private network, this share is 19.3%.
“A Wrong Solution”
The Autonomous Education Association represents more than 60,000 teachers in the province who are currently negotiating the renewal of their contract, which expired on March 31.
The FAE regrets that the Minister of Education is finding “simple answers” to more complex questions, such as in the case of teaching aids, which Quebec would like to see strengthened in schools. These are mainly employees of the school day care centers. “This is a wrong solution,” says the FAE.
With more and more students having learning disabilities or behavior problems, it’s special education teachers who need support from teachers, says the FAE, which regrets many have abandoned ship in recent years.
Mélanie Hubert says the class support is “like Bill 23” that was presented in early May. “From above we will decide what is good and it will go down in the system at all costs,” she said.
Specifically, Bill 23 provides that the Secretary of Education can overrule decisions made by school service centers if they “deviate” from the government’s vision.