COVID-19 pandemic

Tutoring and support for vulnerable students

As part of its commitment, Québec’s Government unveiled a platform to recruit a large number of tutors to further support vulnerable students experiencing academic and psychosocial difficulties in relation to the pandemic. A series of complementary measures aimed at keeping students and school staff on track and promoting their well-being will be deployed. These measures, totalling close to $38M, will be implemented in the coming weeks. Education Minister Jean François Roberge made the announcement last week. 

--Lend a helping hand: Answer the call!

To ensure that the most vulnerable students benefit from additional pedagogical support and that they are able to forge new bonds that will help to strengthen their motivation and foster their well being, a personalized tutoring program is being implemented, outside regular school hours, to accompany them over the long term, until June 2022.

Thus, the government is calling on employees in, or retired from, the school network to make a real contribution to student success and lend a helping hand by offering their services as a tutor. This call for help also extends to college and university students in the field of education who wish to contribute to the efforts. These students can help either by offering their tutoring services to the school network or to AlloProf, or by providing students with psychosocial support through Tel jeunes (Kids Help Phone). 

Interested students and retired school staff can apply through the Answer the Call! Web platform by completing the form (https://www.quebec.ca/en/education/jobs-education/tutoring/). A bank of candidates will be created and made available to these organizations, which will then contact the individuals who best meet the required profile. Current teachers and substitutes don’t need to fill out the form – they can simply let their school service centre, school board or private educational institution know that they are interested in providing tutoring. In all cases, tutors will be paid, at the salary offered by the institution or organization.

--Mental Health Support

The funds granted will also enable the school network to implement various initiatives to provide additional support in the training and coaching of school staff, particularly for more specific problems, such as mental health and student well-being. These funds will be used to hire specialized resources, free up staff for training purposes and purchase equipment. The schools will have the necessary autonomy to implement the most promising initiatives according to their particular needs. 

--An additional safety net for students

In addition to these measures, the Minister of Education announced two important partnerships with Alloprof and Tel jeunes, with a further investment of nearly $12M, which will provide an extra safety net for students. 

The Alloprof organization will receive more than $7.3M to develop new educational and support services for students with learning difficulties or at risk of failing. These include the availability of Alloprof services on Sundays – teachers are now accessible from 1 pm to 5 pm – and the hiring of 100 additional teaching resources recruited from the Answer the Call! platform’s application bank.

For its part, the Tel-jeunes organization has been granted more than $4.5M over two years to offer support to all of Québec’s youth through a variety of actions, namely, the addition of 200 hours of involvement per week during peak periods and access to an after-school messaging service run by post-secondary students recruited from the Answer the Call! platform's application bank. 

All of these initiatives will be rolled out in the coming months and will constitute, in addition to the measures already in place in the school system, an extra safety net for the most vulnerable students.

[Local Journalism Initiative]