all children returned to class this week after teachers negotiating better pay and working conditions walked off the job for various periods of time leading up to the christmas break. most kids missed 11 days of class. but nearly 400,000 students were out of school for a total of seven weeks, almost the equivalent of the summer holidays.
on tuesday, education minister bernard drainville unveiled a $300-million plan to help students catch up — without cancelling march break or prolonging the school year beyond the fête nationale. despite threats that he might do just that, this was surely a prerequisite for maintaining the fragile détente between the government and teachers.
this is not the time to rankle, since teachers haven’t voted on the contract offers yet. nor is it the time for finger-pointing and recrimination. even drainville, who is not averse to scornful pronouncements ( “are you really comparing the job of being a teacher to the job of being an mna?” ), seemed to realize this, holding his tongue when asked if there are lessons to be drawn to avoid a similarly protracted labour dispute in the future.
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although there was some grumbling in recent days that no one was consulted about the plan (which, indeed, might have been nice), drainville didn’t simply impose a one-size-fits-all solution from on high like he typically does. there is flexibility for each school to tailor its own approach — much more than expected from a government that just passed a law to give the education minister the power to appoint the top administrators at service centres and overrule their decisions.
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there are many questions to be asked about why more than a year of contract negotiations still resulted in tens of thousands of teachers having to go on strike without pay and hundreds of thousands of students missing a huge chunk of their school year when education is supposed to be quebec’s top priority .
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