In recent decades, the PQ’s involvement in matters of education is a history of underfunding, controversial top-down reforms, rate freezes and wage cuts.  The Quebec Liberal Party, meanwhile, created the modern education system, developed it and opened it to the changing needs and realities of Quebec society.

We owe the Quebec Liberal Party the creation of the Department of Education in 1964. Liberals created the cegep network, and the University of Quebec network too. It is since this historic shake-up of the system, denounced by clerical and conservative forces at the time, that Quebec has finally caught up with the schooling rates in the rest of the country.  The number of years of schooling completed by Quebec youth aged 25 to 29 now surpasses the Canadian average, and Quebec now boasts the largest proportion of 18 to 34 year-olds with a postsecondary degree.

Not only do young Quebecers now spend more time in school, they learn more while being there than nearly anywhere else in the world.  Indeed, Quebec ranks at the top of international rankings in tests designed to assess knowledge in language, mathematics and science. We owe this performance to the excellent work of teachers, the commitment of parents and the efforts of children. But deliberate and wise choices by the Quebec Liberal Party also play their part:  homework help, investing in direct student services as opposed to structures, giving schools more autonomy and maintaining a healthy competition between the public network and private schools.

Nevertheless, there are fields and activities too long neglected, and some young people taking too long to graduate from the system, or failing altogether to do it.  Our universities, great sources of innovation, have suffered from chronic underfunding, leaving them ill-equipped to compete for the best talent on the North American academic scene.  This is why, since coming into office, the Jean Charest government has taken action and elaborated strategies to fix those shortcomings. They include:

adding 1200 specialized staff to the school network, such as psychologists and speech therapists, in order to provide better support to struggling students and correct the mistake of the previous government, which had laid nearly all them off;

taking junk food out of school cafeterias and adding 90 minutes of physical education a week in elementary school;

reintroducing regular dictation and report cards with percentages, while beginning second language education in grade 1;

elaborating a plan to help children persevere and succeed, in order to bring the high school graduation rate of Quebecers under 20 to 80% by 2020;

developing a scenario for a gradual and responsible increase in university tuition fees, to reverse years of underfunding and ultimately increase the quality and value of all degrees;

re-investing in adult education and training, for workers with a job and those seeking to learn the skills to a new one.