The government’s promise of better working conditions for childcare technicians is not yet reflected in the number of registrations in Estrie CEGEPs.
According to verifications made by the QMI Agency, barely 25 students registered for early childhood education at Cégep de Granby for the term that began at the end of August. This is a drop of 11 registrations compared to fall 2020 and more than half as many as in fall 2016. Fifty-eight people registered for the program for the fall 2016 session. , in Granby.
Further east, at Cégep de Sherbrooke, the number of registrations for the early childhood education program also fell this fall. Forty-three students applied for the fall 2021 term, compared to 55 a year earlier and 52 in fall 2019.
Samia Plante, assistant director of studies at Cégep de Granby, notes that the drop in enrollment in the early childhood education program seems generalized throughout the Quebec college network.
“We see that for 12 colleges for which registrations are down, five are up,” says Plant.
According to her, the working conditions in the early childhood centers explain a large part of the disaffection of the candidates for this profession.
“The teachers, who are very close to the field, tell me that the working conditions and the enhancement of the profession are the main cause of the drop in the number of registrations,” says Samia Plante, stressing that the Cégep de Sorel- Tracy closed her early childhood education program in 2019.
The remuneration, considered too low by some of the daycare educators, would also explain the difficulties of recruiting in the CEGEPs, believes Geneviève Bélisle, executive director of the Quebec Association of early childhood centers.
“The fact that the salary conditions of educators have not been improved, that educators have no employment contract, these are factors that have argued against seeking new students,” said Ms. Bélisle.
A light at the end of the tunnel?
The establishment, this summer, of short-term training programs (COUD) for daycare educators, by the government of Quebec, could help mitigate the effects of the labor shortage in childcare centers, Geneviève hopes. Bélisle. Five hundred students have already expressed their intention to follow the work-study work-study program out of the 2,300 that the government wishes to train in the coming months.
“We hope that this will help us for the year 2021-2022, but we really need to continue our efforts because next March we need to have a lot more people who apply for the DEC, among others, ”explains Ms. Bélisle.
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