Quebec announces tutoring plan
Bernard Drainville has announced a $300‑million tutoring plan to help students catch up following the strikes. Drainville: “the government would hire teachers, including retired and student teachers, to do the tutoring” – this government, which hasn’t been able to hire enough teachers to cover regular classes.
Nicholas 13:35 on 2024-01-09 Permalink
Well, they could hire them over the summer, or March break as they mention, but I agree this will be nigh impossible to implement on their stated timeframe.
dhomas 14:12 on 2024-01-09 Permalink
Not only is there the question of where will they find these teachers where they haven’t been able to find them before, but is that budget even realistic? $300M for 500k students comes out to about 600$/student. Let’s say a teacher-tutor’s salary is about 25$/hour; this is already pretty low for a teacher let alone a tutor. (See here for some examples of tutor prices: https://www.superprof.ca/lessons/all-tutors/montreal/) That would give each student 24 hours, or 3-4 days, of tutoring. This is if ALL the money goes to the teacher-tutors, which is unlikely as there will be some money allocated to management/bureaucracy. Plus, it’s up to the teachers to decide which students need help? This will put more strain on teachers’ workload, in addition to what happens if teachers decide more than the 500k students need help? It seems messy and not very well thought out.I’m willing to be proven wrong, though…
Meezly 16:47 on 2024-01-09 Permalink
Just shows how clueless and out of touch our so-called Education Minister is, along with the party who appointed him.
carswell 17:16 on 2024-01-09 Permalink
Magical thinking on Drainville’s part methinks.
Just like Dubé’s promised health care reform.
Blinkered by a run-government-like-a-business mentality.
Clueless and out of touch indeed.
Nicholas 18:13 on 2024-01-09 Permalink
To be fair, you could do tutoring with 4-6 students per tutor. Using dhomas’s numbers, that’s about an hour a day per child through the end of the school year. Even with higher pay, some students will opt out, so this is doable if you find the staff.
dhomas 19:43 on 2024-01-09 Permalink
Fair point, Nicholas. I hadn’t considered multi-student tutoring. The number might make sense that way.
Ian 19:54 on 2024-01-09 Permalink
Given how the government has operated in the past regarding “emergency funding” for education it will probably be treated like professional development courses. Remote learning on Teams, up to 25 students per class, non-perm pay rate. There might be pushback from the unions but who knows.
carswell 20:00 on 2024-01-09 Permalink
A teacher interviewed on CBC Radio this afternoon said she expects the plan may fail because it relies heavily on teachers working overtime but, she feels, not many will want to do so because they’ll already be overwhelmed by all the work involved in getting school back up and running.
Margaret 10:18 on 2024-01-10 Permalink
This inept and out-of-touch government should have agreed to the teachers’ reasonable demands (especially in light of the MLA’s own 30% increase) and avoided this strike in the first place, The teachers, students and their parents have suffered for no other reason than this government’s inability to do what is best for the population.