Quebec announces $300M tutoring plan to help students catch up after teachers' strikes
Ministerial exams to be pushed back but no extension to the academic year
Students who missed class time because of teachers' strikes in Quebec will have access to additional tutoring, but the academic year will not be extended.
The Quebec government will spend $300 million on the tutoring services and other measures to help students catch up after strikes kept some of them out of school for weeks.
The tutoring will be offered to students who need it but it will have to be completed outside of school hours, Bernard Drainville, Quebec's education minister, said at a news conference Tuesday where he presented the government's back-to-school plan.
Drainville said the government will hire teachers, including retired and student teachers, to do the tutoring.
It will be on a voluntary basis and some schools may also choose to offer students tutoring over March break, he said, but that too would be based on student need and would not be mandatory.
"The needs are different from student to student, from school to school, from service centre to service centre," he said.
The government estimates approximately 500,000 students will require tutoring help, Drainville said.
The tutoring will be available to students later this month, after teachers and school staff have evaluated student needs, Drainville said.
Changes to exams within existing school year
Drainville had previously suggested that the school year could be extended to make up for the days missed during the strike, but he said Tuesday that no ministerial exam would take place after June 24.
Those exams will be delayed, however, and they won't be worth as much toward a student's final grade. The government had previously announced that the January ministerial exams would be delayed two weeks to allow students time to prepare.
The exams will also be a bit different: for students in Grades 10 and 11. They will include only topics that are considered absolutely essential. They will be worth 20 per cent of a student's final grade, not 50 per cent.
The ministerial exams in Grades 5 and 6 will be worth 10 per cent, not 20 per cent.
Students in Grades 10 and 11 who need to attend summer school because they failed a course will also be able to do so free of charge, Drainville said.Teachers will also have longer to prepare the next report cards for students. Normally those would be handed out on March 15, but now teachers will have until March 28.
Plan comes as school finally resumes
Tuesday was the first day back in class for 368,000 students in Quebec whose teachers are part of the Fédération autonome de l'enseignement (FAE). Those students had been out of school since Nov. 23 when the FAE launched an unlimited strike, shutting down about 800 schools.
The FAE ended its strike over the holidays when its delegates agreed to an agreement in principle with the government.
Meanwhile, the common front or Front common — a coalition of Quebec public sector unions representing about 420,000 workers — went on strike for 11 days last year, bringing the number of students out of school in Quebec to about 1.2 million at the height of the strike action.
The coalition reached an agreement in principle with the provincial government on both pay and working conditions Sunday.
Corinne Payne, the general director of the Federation of Parents Committees of Quebec, said her organization is satisfied with the government's plan to help students make up for lost time.
"I think that's what's key in this plan is that there's flexibility. It's not that everyone has the same thing to do," she said.
"Three hundred million dollars is a large amount of money, so the resources are there, the financial resources are there."
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