By Mathilde Élie
Next year will bring considerable changes in our daily lives. We’ve been trapped in the same school for 5 long and tough years, but finally we’ll see the light! The majority of students our age from the province of Quebec will enter Cégep in August. But other provinces don’t have this institution in place, why is that? Let’s go on a history trip together to find out!
Cégep, short for Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel or General and Professional Education College in English is an institution put in place in 1967 as a bridge between secondary school and university. It was implanted via the adoption of Bill 60, the bill that established the Ministry of Education. The changes that Bill 60 brought to education in our province are significant, but they all originated from a special commission, the Commission Parent, put in place in 1962 to reevaluate our education system. At that time, classical colleges prevailed, but they were few and expensive, not to add that sexes were separated and not much schools were addressed to girls. This made the access to higher education difficult for a majority of Quebec’s students. The Commission Parent studied the situation and proposed to create public schools that could prepare a majority of young people to go to university at low cost.
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Commission Parent
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In 1967, there were only 12 Cégeps, but the popularity of these institutions grew so fast that they are now the reference in terms of pre-university course. In fact, if you’re living in the province and want to go to university, you have to go through Cégep unless you’re 21 or older and have followed other classes of the same kind! That’s why today you can find about 48 Cégeps divided in the province.
Unfortunately, these schools has stayed the same for 50 years now and many are questioning the relevance of the formula in today’s society. If we were able to change the education system as radically as we did in the 60s, shouldn’t we be able to do just the same today?
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