Australian experts prefer to take inspiration from Ontario rather than Quebec, which is said to have an education system almost as dysfunctional as theirs.
This is the conclusion of a new report entitled “Lessons from Canada: An Egalitarian Education System is Possible,” written by researchers Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor.
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The two men were part of an Australian delegation that spent 10 days in Canada in October 2024 to learn more about its different education systems.
They found the Ontario model more than inspiring, with its free public schools, where there is no selection, and its private network not subsidized by the state.
In contrast, Quebec’s “three-tier” system (regular public, selective public and private) quickly emerged as the example not to follow, Greenwell explained in a telephone interview from Canberra.
“We were marked by Quebec, because all our problems were reflected back to us,” he said, stressing that he recognized the same skimming and the same “segregation” as in Australia.
The concentration of students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with learning difficulties in mainstream classes can cause real harm, he says.
“The Quebec system is failing a large number of young people,” we read on page 78 of his report.
“We are issuing a friendly warning to Quebec,” he said in an interview: segregation harms teachers and children, who achieve lower results than if they were in more diverse classes.
The School Together Congratulated
The only light on the horizon for Quebec, according to Greenwell, is the “detailed and sophisticated” proposal from the citizen movement L’École ensemble, which he cites extensively in his report.
Last February, Québec solidaire presented the plan designed by L’École ensemble to the National Assembly in the form of a bill.
It aims to ensure that public and private schools in Quebec are part of a common network, which would be free and accessible to all.
The goal is for all children to have access to quality education, regardless of their academic performance or their parents’ income.
Bill 895 proposes to bring together public schools and private schools that agree to stop selection based on grades in particular, within a common network.
Private schools that choose not to join this network would see their public funding cut.
Furthermore, the legislation proposes to make special projects accessible to all students and to prohibit any student selection process.
It provides the same conditions of free education and financing for all schools in the joint network.
École ensemble calculates that the creation of a common network would ultimately generate annual savings of $100 million.
Asked to react to the release of the report, the coordinator of École ensemble, Stéphane Vigneault, said he was proud that his solutions had been accepted by the group of Australian researchers.
He said he hoped the document would circulate and get things moving.
“We’re approaching an election year,” he emphasized in an interview. “We have a solution that’s pragmatic and innovative. Our goal is really to make sure it’s reflected in political platforms.”
An incomplete portrait, deplores the FEEP
For its part, the Federation of Private Educational Establishments (FEEP) regrets not having been met by the Australian delegation.
In an interview, its president, David Bowles, disputed the report’s conclusions and believed that the strength of the Quebec system lies in the fact that parents have the choice of their child’s school.
“I have already attended conferences where people from all over the world came to see what we were doing well in Quebec, because our students do very well in international tests,” he said.
“It is in Quebec that we have the smallest gap between students who have the best results and those who have the most difficulty,” he added.
Bowles also argues that private schools now accept 20 per cent of students with learning difficulties, compared to only 5 per cent a few years ago.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
