To recruit more future teachers, Minister Drainville opened the door on Thursday to remuneration for teaching internships, which has long been demanded by student associations.
“Eventually, we will have to get there,” the Minister of Education said Thursday morning, without however specifying a timetable for this.
For her part, the Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Déry, indicated that the remuneration for the fourth and final teaching internship, which includes taking full charge of a class for several weeks, was under study.
Minister Drainville was reacting to the most recent figures published Thursday which show a drop in registrations in teaching programs this fall, particularly in the bachelor’s degree in preschool education and elementary education, where the drop is 20% according to data obtained by The Journal in nine university establishments.
“We still have a lot of work to do to promote education,” said Minister Drainville, who first recalled the salary increases, additional help in the classroom and the 5,400 permanent positions granted in the new collective agreement with teachers.
The minister later reiterated that he wanted to “change the narrative in education,” blaming unions and the media in the process. “We have to find a way to make the narrative not just education, it’s hell,” he said.
He also attacked certain universities which are more reluctant than others to set up short 30-credit training courses, which allow teachers who are not legally qualified to obtain their teaching certificate more quickly.
“In some cases we are facing resistance, I deplore that universities are not sufficiently involved in creating these 30-credit fast tracks. Everyone needs to get into solution mode,” he declared.
“I am the dean of a faculty of education this morning and I look at these figures and I say to myself: ‘We cannot continue as before, we must find other ways’,” he added.
Short courses are not unanimously supported in the university network, where many fear “discounted training” compared to the four-year bachelor’s degree in education, comprising 120 credits.
During question period Thursday morning at the National Assembly, Solidarity MP Ruba Ghazal criticized Minister Drainville for “distributing blame,” while emphasizing the importance of people choosing teaching “as a first career.”
“It’s not the salaries, it’s the working conditions that mean that we have fewer teachers who flee, who leave teaching, and then there are fewer who register,” she said.
– With Nicolas Lachance
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