2023-09-01 00:19:05
Education Minister Bernard Drainville wants to change the process for assigning teacher contracts.
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“I’m going to hope that our unions give us this flexibility to avoid the kind of back-to-school psychodrama that we’ve known for too many years,” he said Thursday.
Last week, the Minister announced that there were more than 8,500 teaching positions to be filled, data that was not up to date since an assignment session had taken place in the meantime. On Monday, 1829 were still missing.
“The way to assign the teachers, there, so late in August […] I don’t find that acceptable,” says Bernard Drainville.
“The solution is not to have more or less sessions. It works, the sessions. You had to ask how many vacancies maybe, but how many people do you have on the lists? If I have 1000 positions to fill and 1300 people on the recall lists, there is no problem. The problem arises when the opposite happens, ”says the president of the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE), Mélanie Hubert.
“If we were able to assign more teachers, let’s say, in June, before the end of June, I think that would make our return to school go much better for students, parents and school staff. , honestly”, maintains the Minister of Education.
However, the unions defend themselves from slowing down the process.
“If he wants us to talk to each other, we will talk to each other, then we will talk regarding the funding that is sent to the school service centers which allows the school service centers to give the positions earlier”, indicates the president of the Federation of Education Unions, Josée Scalabrini.
“Currently, the way it’s done and how school service centers are funded, they keep large reserves, and positions often appear at the end of August, and we can even assign new positions until the end September,” she adds.
The Minister would like this point to be discussed in the current negotiations. But the national unions specify that the assignment sessions are normally decided by the local unions according to the needs of the school service centres.
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