For nearly one in three of Quebec's secondary-school students, the goal of getting a diploma attesting to their successful completion of high-school studies will be turn out to be a mirage. They won't graduate. They will instead join the ranks of the province's ever-expanding pool of unskilled labour.
For all the studies and speeches and promises made by politicians and business and education leaders, little has been done in the province to counteract our shocking dropout rate that reaches as high as 40 per cent in rural areas.
The dropout rate among the province's half-million secondary-school students is, in fact, getting worse. It rose from 26 per cent in 2000 to 29 per cent in 2007 - this in an increasingly demanding world in which skills are a must.
If it were not for the example of Ontario, Quebec's leaders could carry on lamenting the situation and making promises to fix it. But unfortunately for Quebec, Ontario stopped talking, took action and as a result, its dropout rate is falling: The province's high-school graduation rate in 2003 was 68 per cent. It now stands at 77 per cent and Ontario is well on the way to achieving its target of 85 per cent by 2010-11.
Ontario is investing $1.5 billion in what it calls its Student Success Strategy, which tailors a student's trajectory to his or her needs and interests. The Toronto District School Board, for example, offers more than 600 programs aimed at keeping students in school.
These programs include the "specialist high skills major," a trade course that includes classroom work and related workplace experience. Ontario's trade programs include community safety and emergency services, information and communications technology, agriculture, arts and culture, business and construction and mining.
Ontario curriculum consultant Rob de Rubeis told Canadian Press last year that the trade programs gets students "excited" about education: "They see meaning in it," he said, "and they see that there's something that they can achieve at the end of it."
Flexibility is a key part of the success. Individual school boards choose the best programs for their area and their students.
In Quebec, such flexibility is anathema. Faced with problems that a greater degree of autonomy might solve, Quebec's instinct is always to tighten its grip, write up more rules and demand more reports.
We can see the results: 100,000 more high-school dropouts since 2003. It's time Quebec tried looking outside its borders for solutions.