The evolution of professionalism - Centre for Policy Studies in ...

énoncé de politique et plan d’action (Quebec Schools: Towards Policies and Action
Plans). The document gave school boards true managerial autonomy through a
more precise sharing of responsibilities between them and the Ministry. The
document also advanced the educational project concept, an action plan created in
conjunction with the teachers, parents, students, and the school’s management. In
1988, Bill 107, introduced by Minister Ryan of the Bourassa Liberal government,
instituted orientation councils and did away with local school boards by regrouping
them into regional school boards.
From 1991 to 1996, the question of decentralization provoked debates and a
general shaking up of ideas, as it encroached on powers held by actors at various
levels of the education system. In July 1998, in the midst of the work being done
by the Commission on the Estates General, Minister Marois of the Parti Quebecois
government submitted Bill 180, which amended the Education Act to give more
powers to teaching establishments, defi ned as “an autonomous institution with a
governing board”. Every school (including professional training centres and centres
for adult education) was obliged to create, by the fall of 1998, a governing board on
which users had the same number of votes as school personnel, and of which the
president had to be a parent.
During 2000-03, several developments emerged in the areas of imputability
and performance reporting. It could be said that the new public management began
working its way into the world of schools along with certain leitmotifs: effi cacy,
effi ciency, results and control from quantitative indices, school choice, competition
between establishments, special educational projects, a client-centered approach,
etc. There was thus a certain tension between this and concerns, expressed by the
Commission for the Estates General, about equal opportunity and educational success
for all. At the same time, Parti Quebecois Education Minister Legault promoted the
Ministry of Education Strategic Plan for 2002-03, which focused on performance
reporting, in order to have greatest number of people achieve success in school.
At the start of the school year 2000, Minister Legault identifi ed obtaining
results based on quantitative targets as a priority. In September 2001, following a
participatory and consensual model, a Ministry/School Board Directing Committee
was formed to support the creation of schools’ success plans. The committee was
to help schools analyze, in a refl ective way, their academic results and decide what
actions taken or to be taken supported the greatest success for every student. In
her 2001-02 report, the Auditor General of Quebec underscored the diffi cultly in
implementing these success plans.
This new form of education governance is a “hybrid” one (Lessard 2003),
including both a horizontal logic of mobilization (incorporating all school actors,
local community partners, and local or regional competition for the clientele),
and a vertical logic of state guidance and quality control through a new resultsbased
national curriculum, imposed by government policy and made operational
by the top of the education system’s bureaucratic pyramid. Regulation or vertical
governance systematically and systemically demands conformity from the system’s
agents, while paradoxically giving to these same agents the power to initiate
actions, albeit through governing boards established within parameters defi ned by
the higher authority. Horizontal governance, by contrast, seeks to adjust the logics
104 Section 3: Central Canada