The education system in the province of Quebec has certain important differences from those in the rest of Canada. Education in Quebec is governed by the Ministére de l'Éducation (Ministry of Education).
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2 Post-secondary education 3 Private schools 4 External Links |
In structure, the first twelve years are much like those in the rest of Canada. Education begins with kindergarten (maternelle) and grades 1-6 as primary school (école primaire).
High school (école secondaire) is five years, called Secondary 1-5 or simply grades 7-11. High school students who complete Secondary 5 obtain the governmental Diplôme d'études secondaires (DES).
Language of instruction in Quebec schools is sometimes misunderstood. Under the Charter of the French Language, passed in 1977, all students are required to attend French-language schools. However, children meeting the following criteria may attend the publicly funded English-language schools:
Formerly, school boards were divided between Roman Catholic and Protestant (called confessional schools). The establishment of a confessional education system was confirmed when the Canadian confederation was created with the British North America Act of 1867 which granted power over education to the Provinces.
The separation of the State and the Church took a very long time to occur in Quebec. Many governments failed in their attempts to create a Ministry of Education: Quebec had to wait 1964 to get a modern education system. For more than 100 years, non-Catholic immigrants from outside Canada who settled in Quebec were not allowed to attend French Catholic schools. The Quebec Education Act of 1988 provided for a change to linguistic school boards. This change has only recently finished being implemented. The secularization of education is however not yet complete.
The segregation of catholic and protestant/public schools is still the norm in the other Canadian provinces. The main public schools network offers the choice between moral or religious education while catholics run their own separate schools.
Most students continue to CEGEP, or Collège d'enseignement général et professionel (general and professional education college). These students can specialize in a number of different vocational or pre-university fields. The term of study is two years for pre-university and three years for most professional degrees. Students completing CEGEP earn the Diplôme d'études collégiales. Like primary and secondary schools, both state-run and private CEGEPs exist.
The word CEGEP should legally be used to describe only the state run post secondary schools, where tuition is free, but in fact very little attention is paid to this distinction. The 26 Private institutions which offer a post-secondary program recognized by the Quebec Ministry of Education receive a pro rata subsidy for each of their 15,000 students. Unlike the state-run CEGEPs the private post secondary schools usually do not combine pre-university and vocational programs in one institution. About half offer pre-university and the other half offer vocational programs.
Primary school, secondary school, and CEGEP add up to 13 years of pre-university study, one more than other provinces. For this reason, most undergraduate university degrees are three years in length. Students from outside Quebec have this term supplemented by a freshman year at the beginning of their university career. University education is much like in other North American jurisdictions. In addition to private institutions, the government of Quebec has a network of universities in several Quebec cities, called the Université du Québec.
Quebec subsidizes post-secondary education and is known for the low cost of its university education; Montreal has four universities, and a greater percentage of its population are students than in any other large city in North America.Basic education
Note: the private schools have, until recently, been excepted from all this.
(see "private schools" below)Post-secondary education