Quebec CAQ government unveils a new education dashboard

Following on the heels of the health network dashboard, Quebec is unveiling a new platform for tracking certain data in the education sector.

In a news release on Monday, Education Minister Bernard Drainville stresses that this new dashboard will give stakeholders in the network access to "relevant and reliable information at the right time."

He suggests that this data will also help to make the ministry "more efficient".

The table includes nine indicators, including graduation rates at different levels, results of the secondary IV and V ministerial examinations, and a figure that caused a lot of talk at the start of the school year - vacancies in the network.

Another statistic that will be closely monitored is air quality in schools.

Current statistics show that the secondary school graduation and qualification rate will be 84.2 per cent in 2022-2023, an increase of 0.1 percentage points since the previous year.

• LISTEN on CJAD 800 Radio: Quebec unveiled an education dashboard. What is it and is it a good idea?

In addition, there were 3,164 vacancies in the education sector, including 1,094 teaching posts, according to mid-January figures.

As for air quality, 92.6 per cent of classrooms were within the desirable CO2 concentration range in December.

"We shouldn't be afraid to show the results. It's a great exercise in transparency, and we need to learn from each other," said Drainville at the inauguration of a school in Quebec City on Monday.

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Avoir accès à des données, c'est essentiel pour prendre des décisions éclairées et pour mieux accompagner nos élèves.

Grâce au tableau de bord, nous aurons accès à de l’information fiable rapidement.📊https://t.co/DquzMu4aHi

— Bernard Drainville (@BDrainvilleQc) March 17, 2024

The minister also hinted that he would like to see a ranking of schools.

"For the moment, it's the school service centres. Could it one day be schools? Why not?" he asked

A lukewarm reception

The Fédération québécoise des directions d'établissement d'enseignement (FQDE) belives the indicators are important, but they run the risk of pitting schools against each other, which the federation feels is "unhealthy."

"When parents start comparing themselves, they'll ask questions, and all it will do is provoke negative reactions in the network," said FQDE president Nicolas Prévost.

"It's going to be a case of shopping around for schools when we may not have the full context of the school. We find this kind of competition unhealthy", he added.

The French teachers federation of unions (Fédération autonome de l'enseignement - FAE) president Mélanie Hubert added that such a ranking would "distort" the work of teachers.

"Student results and the statistics we are looking for often end up being a match, or at least an established link between the quality of the work done in schools," she said. "This leads to a loss of sense of mission, and we end up teaching in an obsession with performance for the sake of academic results, whereas the school's mission is much broader than that."

Quebec solidaire (QS) echoed this view, saying that the data must be used "correctly."

"It's essential to have data and transparency, but (...) if the minister uses it to create competition between schools, I fear it will contribute to stigmatizing schools that are already disadvantaged," said MNA Ruba Ghazal in a news release. "In any case, it will not resolve the inequalities between pupils, it will not fill the thousands of vacant teaching posts, and it will not relieve already overburdened teachers."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on March 18, 2024.