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The addition of three pedagogical days to allow teachers to do more training arouses anger in the ranks of school daycare staff.
• Read also: Quebec changes the school calendar to give more training to teachers
Childcare will be offered free of charge to families during these three additional pedagogical days.
The announcement had “the effect of a bomb on educators,” says Isabelle Larouche, president of the Syndicate of school support staff of the Discoverers, in a letter sent to the Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, Thursday.
“What did you think of by granting these days, say of training and preparation, while the pedagogical days, in this time of pandemic, are an additional workload for the staff in place, already at the end of their rope”, add Mme Larouche.
“Do you have any idea of the work accomplished on a daily basis? That your famous bubbles are almost impossible to respect, that children act like little robots, that the number of interventions and disorganization are on the rise? ”She continues.
This decision is also strongly denounced by the Federation of Public Service Employees (FEESP-CSN), which represents school daycare staff.
“A school is a team, it is insane to want to give respite to one part of it by overloading the other” affirmed its president, Nathalie Arguin, by press release.
“The sound of the bell everywhere in the province is the collective fed up. The support staff are exhausted, ”she adds.
The news also caused a reaction on social networks. Rachel Gagnon, a technician in school daycare in Montérégie, says she is “totally indignant”.
“It’s the straw that has just broken the camel’s back among my colleagues and myself,” she says, deploring the lack of recognition towards the staff of the school network’s daycare services.
By the end of the school year, three school days will be replaced by three additional pedagogical days, which must be devoted to planning and training related to distance education.
Students will be on leave during these three days, so the number of school days will drop from 180 to 177 this year.
To avoid penalizing parents, the childcare service will be offered free of charge to parents of children who are usually registered there.
The goal is to allow teachers to better prepare for the coming months in order to better meet the needs of the students, it is explained.
These training days must however be distributed over the school calendar. A maximum of one additional pedagogical day per month is established, so that schools cannot plan three consecutive training days.
This change in the teaching calendar aims to respond in part to the demands of the teachers’ unions, who are asking for more time to allow teachers to breathe a little.
The president of the Federation of Education Unions, Josée Scalabrini, is delighted with this “good news”.
“There is a level of fatigue and disorganization in many areas. It is a very precious time that we have just added. Will this be enough? We’ll see, ”she said.
Private schools oppose it
However, the Federation of Private Educational Institutions would have preferred that schools be offered this possibility rather than the change being imposed throughout the school network.
“Some schools might need these training days while others, judging that their teachers are sufficiently trained and experienced in virtual teaching, should be able to choose to offer all the school days possible to students in the current context” , says its president, David Bowles.
