Proposed financing changes for under-performing students

Experts have proposed to revise financing for pupils who need extra help in order to end the “race for a diagnosis” for children underperforming in school.

This is one of the recommendations of the Quebec Committee for children with behavioral difficulties, contained in the brief submitted for the consultations on educational success.

In the school system, the students who have a certain diagnosis receive a “code” that is attached to additional funding. However, this approach results in certain negative impacts on student services, according to the Committee. “The administrative identification of students with disabilities has the effect of leading schools into a race for diagnoses,” they said.

Professionals spend a lot of time managing this paperwork, which consequently reduces the time spent on student services, said Committee Chair, France Michon. “There is a need to review this approach,” she says.

To ensure that services are accessible and not lacking, the Committee proposes the introduction of minimum services for every school, based on each unique environment. The objective is that “from the beginning, we can count on resources that are not called into question every year,” says Michon.

The Ministry of Education intends to review the rules that surround this financing as part of ongoing consultations.

The proposal is far from unanimous seeing as though the teachers’ unions want to maintain what is called “the categorical approach”, which is, according to them, the only way to guarantee services to students with a diagnosis. Funding for disabled student services is about $ 2.3 billion annually.