As students prepare to return to school, a new survey suggests most Quebecers believe the province’s education system has deteriorated over the past 15 years.
A La Presse survey found nearly three in five respondents believe the quality of education has declined, while just seven per cent think it has improved.
Montreal parent Miguel Tremblay says the strain is also being felt at home. Last school year, he received 456 emails from his children’s school, equivalent to about 14 hours of reading and roughly 166,000 words.
“It’s more than two and a half emails per day of school, which is a lot more than 163 PDFs that I had to open,” said Tremblay.
Nearly three in five of the emails required some kind of action from parents, he said, with many not making the required action clear in the subject line.
“My two daughters are going at the same school. Sometimes I receive two emails with the same content. So receiving one would do the work,” said Tremblay.
The survey points to teacher shortages and high turnover as some of the education system’s biggest challenges. Nearly half of respondents gave Quebec’s elementary and secondary education system a C, while one in five gave it a D or E.
“I think that Quebecers are well aware that we’ve been underinvesting in education, that way more resources have to be poured in,” said Marion Miller, a Montreal high school teacher.
Miller says staffing shortages can put additional pressure on teachers and other school employees.
“When there’s a shortage in the school of teachers or techs or special educators, it stretches everyone else really thin. So then you’re more likely to have other people burn out,” said Miller.
She says students can also be affected when schools struggle to maintain consistent staffing and support.
“Everyone knows either a child in their entourage or a colleague’s child who, for example, needed reading support and there just wasn’t a professional available in the school or has gone through multiple teachers in the same school year because of burnout and teachers leaving and subs coming in,” said Miller.
The poll surveyed 1,040 Quebecers between Aug. 6 and 10. The findings showed little difference in opinion based on age, gender, language, region or whether respondents had children.
Despite the concerns, education ranked ninth among Quebecers’ priorities ahead of the October election, behind issues including health care and the cost of living.
