Improving High Schools in Quebec

Abstract

The province of Quebec has a high-performing school system. In all rounds of the PISA results, Quebec has done well, especially in mathematics. Yet Quebec also has a persistently high dropout rate from its secondary schools, especially when one considers that Quebec only has 11 years of schooling, rather than the 12 years found everywhere else in Canada and in the United States. In the 1960s, Quebec created a system in which secondary schooling was made a year shorter followed by two years at a community college (called CEGEP in Quebec). After CEGEP, students can enter a university or undertake other kinds of advanced training. In total, students receive the same number of years of schooling as they do elsewhere, but the CEGEPs provide a different institutional structure. Still, just over 60% of Quebec students successfully complete secondary education in the expected time, and only about 71% do so even when allowing two extra years. When Statistics Canada measures high school completion or equivalent at age 24, Quebec is last among Canadian provinces. The shortfall in high school graduates is a long-standing issue in the province. In 2009, a government commission chaired by businessman Jacques Menard (www2.bmo.com/bmo/ files/images/7/1/knowledge_is_power.pdf) reported that: Despite all the resources devoted to promoting student retention, our education system lets nearly one in three students fall through the cracks: 30% of our youth celebrate their 20th birthday without a high school or vocational diploma. Beyond the human tragedies that loom over ropouts and their families for their entire lives, imagine the disaster in store for a province where barely two workingaged people will have to support five people age 65 or over. The Menard report proposed a goal of 80% 'on time' graduation. Reducing Dropouts Over the years, the Quebec Ministry of Education has taken various steps to try to improve the situation. In 2002, it launched an ambitious reform called (in English) New Approaches, New Solutions (NANS). NANS was an attempt to reduce the impact of social inequalities on high school completion. It focused on providing additional resources to high schools in disadvantaged areas. Some 200 schools--about a third of all high schools in Quebec--took part. Each school was to develop and implement an action plan to improve student success that was appropriate to its local context, using a sophisticated planning process, additional funds, consultants from their school districts and regional teams of the Ministry of Education. The whole effort was tracked for years by an evaluation team, headed by Michel Janosz of the Universite de Montreal. The final evaluation report, recently released (www.gresumontreal. ca/pg/siaa/siaa-rapports_sommairesynthese. html), is a rich document with many nuanced findings about both the implementation of NANS and its effects on a whole variety of school practices and student outcomes. However, to summarize the main results, the strategy turned out to be difficult to implement and had limited effects on student outcomes. On the first point, schools lacked the capacity to put in place the sophisticated model of needs assessment and action planning envisioned in NANS. In most schools, nobody had the skill or time to manage the strategy as intended. The proposed extensive involvement of community partners was rarely achieved to a significant degree. Although consultants were able to provide some support, it was simply insufficient to overcome the obstacles. Schools did take many actions and initiatives as part of NANS, but the evaluation found that these initiatives did not challenge core practices or beliefs in most schools and were aimed primarily at extra programs, such as after-school services or school discipline, rather than at improving daily teaching and learning practices. …