1 Introduction

Québec’s early childhood education policies have become the most significant ones in Canada and worldwide due to their impact on the integral development of children. Educational initiatives have been established based on the principals of high-quality education in the province, and the Government of Québec decided to renew the concept of success on education for the last 20 years. In this sense, the province ended up obtaining social, economic, and cultural progresses when began counting on the role of policies that assisted in impacting on children development. The Policy on Educational Success of Québec is clearly at the core of significant actions at present (CANADA, 2017).

This policy is an important one to French-Canadians due to its conception of high-quality education. It was projected over three broad areas of intervention, challenges, and orientations, and they are: (1) everyone achieving their full potential; (2) an inclusive environment for development, learning and success; and (2) the mobilization of partners and stakeholders in support of educational success.

According to the Policy, ‘everyone achieving their full potential’ “[…] is at the heart of the mission of schools and educational childcare centrers. Child development has a significant impact on preparation for school, adaptation to the school environment and educational success.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 38).

By ‘an inclusive environment for development, learning and success’ it is meant that

[…] educational childcare centrers and schools are open environments that welcome people from a wide variety of socio- economic, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and where people learn about life as they meet others and discover new possibilities. (CANADA, 2017, p. 51).

With regard to the ‘mobilization of partners and stakeholders in support of educational success’, the Policy means that “[…] education is a social responsibility that requires a shared vision of educational success in order to ensure consistent and complementary actions.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 63).

Thus far, each area of intervention of the Policy on Educational Success of Québec is a fundamental one, and they are supposed to be apprehended as interdependents. The success of interventions of one level depends on their complementarity with interventions at the other levels, and, mainly, on crucial efforts of the various practitioners, stakeholders and partners. In short, the Policy should assist children in achieving high-quality education by intervening in areas such as children and students, school and educational childcare centers, and community, stakeholders and partners. It is equally important to mention that several social agents should participate in the process of intervening. They are fundamental to achieve decisive goals in society.

To United Nations’ (UN) 2030 Agenda, the term ‘quality education’ means an educational approach to ensure inclusive and equitable education and the promotion of lifelong learning for all (UNITED…, 2015). The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 of quality education is indispensable to paving the way to people to reach new goals in life. Equally important, SDG 4 can even help overcoming poverty and hunger and guarantying a healthier life, gender equity, access to clean water and sanitation, and qualified job opportunities (BOEREN, 2019). In agreement with Boccanfuso, Larouche, and Trandafir (2015), education is a crucial issue in a country’s economy and social development. Additionally, as stated in the Comisión’s report (COMISIÓN ECONÓMICA PARA AMÉRICA LATINA Y EL CARIBE, 2014), education is

one of the fundamental rights of every person, as well as it is a decisive element of democratic development and citizenship in nations worldwide.

In specialized literature, Latin American countries are generally approached as developing ones. Many reasons would justify why they are considered so. Examples are their fragile development of economy, vulnerable public security systems, absence of qualified job opportunities, calamity of public health systems, asymmetric income distribution, large corruption schemes, lack of quality education for the people, and so forth.

This scientific research is placed in the field of education, thus focusing on the lack of quality education for the people in Latin America region seems appropriate. This way, as reported by Rodríguez (2019), Latin American

countries still face some remaining challenges from the last century for the field of education, which are to guarantee proper pre-school, elementary and high- school educations, to strengthen professional education and to expand the adult one. Likewise, initiatives on including native people to formal school systems and on enhancing education methods still lack of commitment by governments.

Murillo (2016) state that Latin American countries will go through some defiant stages on providing education to their people in the twentieth-first century. Some of these issues are related to inappropriate school facilities, and unschooling process due to repeating the class or dropping out school.

All of this scenario sustains the recurring idea that Latin America is a region in the world where inequality among people still remains. Conforming to Castro, Rodríguez-Gómez and Gairín (2017), Lopez-Calva, Lustig and Ortiz Juarez (2015), and Székely and Mendoza (2017), it is widely known that Latin America is one of the most unequal regions in the world, just like sub-Saharan region in Africa. But, in contrast to the latter, issues that persist in Latin America are commonly related to income, consumption expenditures, political influence, security, health and education.

From this point on, with respect to acquiring high-quality education to the current educational setting of Latin American countries, the research question to this investigation is identified in the following: what actions can Latin American countries’ governments take to provide high-quality education to their peoples?

In this paper it is presented recommendations on high-quality education to Latin American countries’ governments by taking the Policy on Educational Success of Québec as Québec’s main official document to achieve quality education. By using the content analysis method, it was investigated the extent to which the Policy on Educational Success of Québec adheres to the SDG number 4, as well as it was analyzed the concordance of the most significant words from the same policy.

2 Methodology

According to Bardin (2016), the content analysis is a method composed of three intrinsically related phases. They are ‘pre-analysis’, ‘exploration of the material’, and ‘dealing with the results and interpretation’.

In the ‘pre-analysis’ phase the analyst performs the pre-analysis of corpus, that is the documents, and systematizes ideas that lead to an accurate scheme of successive operations. Then, the ‘exploration of the material’ phase is related to descripting significant contents from the corpus. These significant contents are named ‘unit records’. But to collect them from the documents it is important to create categories, as seen in the chart 1. So, if pre-analysis phase is successfully completed, the following procedure consists in applying some decisions over the data.

The categories and indicators were created based on the UN’s 2030 Agenda SDG 4 and its ten goals. To UN (UNITED…, 2020), they are:

a) By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable, and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes;

b) By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education;

c) By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university;

d) By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship;

e) By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations;

f) By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy;

g) By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non- violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development;

h) Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all;

i) By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries;

j) By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States.

The systematization of the record units of the Policy on Education Success of Québec is seen in the chart 2.

The phase ‘dealing with the results and interpretation’ is the last one of the content analysis method. At this stage, the analyst performs interpretations. And some figures, charts, and graphics can be composed in order to achieve the research goal by responding the research question.

In addition, a lexical analysis was performed. This is a technique that consists in measuring the quantity of words of the corpus, and it also aims at recognizing the lexical base of the documents to allow the analyst to state on what he/she observes when dealing with the data for interpretations to begin.

The online tool Word Cloud Art Creator assisted in representing the frequency of words, and the software Orange, for data mining, enabled doing a concordance analysis.

3 Results and discussions

The significant unit records from The Policy on Educational Success of Québec were analyzed by density. The first density, seen in the graphic 1, is on the categories, and the second one is on the indicators.

The density of the Category B (The quality in teaching and learning processes, and in learning spaces) is 34%, then, the highest one. Subsequently, the Category A (People’s learning, skills, and competences) holds the second- highest value, 24%, as long as the Category C (The promotion of equitable development of the people) also holds 24%.

Next, the density of the Category D (The minimum conditions to achieve quality education) is 6%. And to conclude, the Category E (The vocational training to foster quality education) holds 12%.

Importar imagenThe resolution of the mathematical formula resulted in

an average value of 6.6. This way, now it is possible to frame the categories that are placed above and below the average value, as the figure 1 demonstrates.

The Categories A, B and C are all placed above the average value because their number of unit records by each category was 8, 11 and 8, respectively. However, the Category B is the most significant one. Its indicators hold, together, 11 unit records, but not equally divided. They are the Indicators B1 (To obtain early childhood and pre-school educations), B2 (To achieve technical, vocational and higher educations to adults), and B3 (To construct and improve places to develop education for all).

In the Category A, the Indicators A1 (To develop effective learning) and A2 (To develop technical skills in people due to the labor market) hold 8 unit records together. The same value was registered to the Category C. It also holds

8 unit records, which are placed into its two indicators: Indicator C1 (To eliminate gender inequality and prejudices from the field of education) and Indicator C2 (To acquire knowledge and skills to ensure global citizenship, sustainability, human rights and cultural diversity).

Opposing, the Categories D and E were placed below the average value. The reason is because their number of unit records by each category was 2 and 4, respectively. Both of them are below the average value of 6.6. Their indicators are ‘To ensure literacy and basic mathematics for the people’ (Category D), and ‘To access scholarships and vocational training programs’

and ‘To increase the number of qualified teachers and teacher’s trainings’ (Category E).

The major interventions of the Policy on Educational Success of Québec are related to the quality in teaching and learning processes, and in learning spaces (Category B). As read in this Policy (CANADA, 2017), the Government of Québec will “[…] continue the implementation of full-time kindergarten for 4-year-olds to complement educational childcare centre services.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 41). Also, it will “[…] take action to create a provincial institute of educational excellence based on the recommendations of a designated task force.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 55), “[...] adjust the frequency of the evaluation of learning so as to focus on the most important points in students’ educational path.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 55), “[…] establish a formal process for analyzing all possible means of enabling teachers to fully assume their key role in student success.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 55), “[...] promote parents’ engagement in their children’s educational success from a very young age.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 66), and “[…] help parents of kindergarten and Elementary 1 students enhance their parenting experience and develop their parenting skills.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 66).

Still, other commitments of the Government of Québec to people are related to supporting “[…] parents and community representatives who want to become involved in school life, particularly by sitting on governing boards and parent committees.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 66), to forming “[…] a new culture- education alliance that extends from educational childcare to adult education.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 59), to working “[...] closely with municipal and cultural organizations to optimize the use of existing infrastructures.” (CANADA, 2017,

p. 62), to launching “[…] an action plan on school infrastructures.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 62), and to investing “[…] in schools’ technological infrastructure to help make Québec a veritable digital society, accessible and focused on knowledge and skills development.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 62).

In addition, other intentions of this government that are related to people’s learning, skills, and competences are to

[…] study the possibility of extending the age of compulsory school attendance from 16 to 18, or until the student has obtained a first diploma or qualification, by offering educational paths that meet their needs, particularly in training for qualifications (CANADA, 2017, p. 41),

to “[…] launch an action plan concerning digital technologies in education, higher education and competency development.” (CANADA, 2017,

p. 46), to “[…] work toward the modernization of pedagogical frameworks and procedures for the evaluation of learning.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 46), to

[…] publish a broad plan of action to diversify and adapt educational services and offer the necessary guidance so that all students, regardless of their needs or social background, can achieve their full potential (CANADA, 2017, p. 50),

to “[…] implement the conditions needed to offer a stimulating school environment based on best practices and the most successful models.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 59), and to foster

[...] equal opportunity and providing a framework for home schooling and free schooling for students with precarious immigration status, and bestowing more powers on institutions offering young people educational services outside the current frameworks (CANADA, 2017, p. 50).

Still, other actions are linked with people’s learning, skills, and competences. They are related to opening up “[...] dialogue with the business community to solicit its involvement beyond adapting vocational training to labour market needs and make companies aware of the importance of educational success.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 70) and to encouraging “[...] the promotion and continued presence in schools at the local, regional and provincial levels of models of educational and professional success.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 70).

The Category C, on the promotion of equitable development of the people, holds some discourses for the Government of Québec to achieve in the upcoming years. According to the Policy on Educational Success of Québec (CANADA, 2017), the government will “[…] review the funding model for students with handicaps, social maladjustments or learning difficulties.”

(CANADA, 2017, p. 41), “[…] add specialized resources to improve the integrated services offer and to provide for special needs students in vocational training centres and adult education centres with more support and guidance.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 41), “[…] establish a minimum level of specialized and integrated services in schools and centres to allow them to respond equally to the needs of all students.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 50), and “[…] create a provincial issues table on the educational success of Indigenous students in the youth and adult sectors in order to find possible solutions to meet their needs.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 50).

Other important actions are connected to the proposal of improving “[…] the continuum of services for allophone students and the support provided to vulnerable students of immigrant origin.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 50), of supporting “[…] entrepreneurship projects at school.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 46), of adding “[…] one specialized resource in each elementary school in Québec to act as a liaison between students, their families and other significant practitioners.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 50), and of implementing “[…] measures, in collaboration with private schools, to facilitate the integration of students with handicaps, social maladjustments or learning difficulties.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 50).

The Category E, on the vocational training to foster quality education, is part of those placed below the average value of 6.6. Its content demonstrates that the Government of Québec will “[…] launch a vocational training action plan.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 46) and “[…] a major initiative on the valorization of the teaching profession and the professional autonomy of teachers.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 55). Also, “In collaboration with the school system and the university community, [it will] publish a new competencies framework for the teaching profession aiming to update initial teacher training and professional development for teacher.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 55, our addition) and “[…] create an annual prize to be awarded to a teacher in recognition of his or her innovative pedagogical practices.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 55).

The Category D is on the minimum conditions to achieve quality education. It is the last category placed below the average value. Anyhow, it

also holds discourses on action for the Government of Québec to achieve. These discourses say that the government will

[…] publish a collaborative interministerial strategy on education for children between the ages of 0 and 8, developed by the Ministère de la Famille, the Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur and the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux; this strategy is intended to foster the continuity, quality and accessibility of early childhood education up to the end of Elementary Cycle One and to ensure that students acquire the basic literacy and numeracy skills (CANADA, 2017, p. 41)

and “[…] focus on the development, enhancement and maintenance of literacy skills throughout life, in particular by implementing a literacy and francization strategy and implementing a strategy to improve language skills.” (CANADA, 2017, p. 46).

Therefore, the Policy on Educational Success of Québec comprises acts that mostly go towards the promotion of equitable development of the people, to people’s learning, skills, and competences, and to the quality in teaching and in learning processes, and in learning spaces. Specifically, the actions on these themes are related to developing effective learning and technical skills in people due to the labor market, to obtaining early childhood and pre-school educations, to achieving technical, vocational and higher educations to adults, to constructing and improving places to develop education for all, to eliminating gender inequality and prejudices from the field of education, and to acquiring knowledge and skills to ensure global citizenship, sustainability, human rights and cultural diversity.

On the other hand, other actions of this policy concern to the intentions that are less significant in the Policy, but equally important to the French- Canadian people. They concern to the minimum conditions to achieve quality education, and to the vocational training to foster quality education. Their specific actions are to ensure literacy and basic mathematics for the people, to access scholarships and vocational training programs, and to increase the number of qualified teachers and teacher’s trainings.

The lexical analysis performed revealed the most frequent terms of the Policy. They are seen in the figure 2.

Although the figure 2 illustrates a word cloud composed with many words, the most prominent ones are ‘students’, ‘educational’, ‘government’, ‘education’, ‘services’ and ‘school’. The different size of each word states their relevance in the Policy. Then, the bigger a word is, the most significant it is for the document as well.

Specifically, the figure 3 shows the concordance on the first word: students.

The noun ‘students’ appears 13 times in the analysis. And its relations with other words are numerous. Basically, the statements refer to student’s educational path, parenting experience, special needs, vocational trainings, development in life, origins, families, knowledge and skills.

The next concordance is on the adjective ‘educational’. Its frequency number is 11.

The statements clarify that ‘educational’ is related to the success of the French-Canadian students from chilcare, to pre-school, elementary and high- school educations. Then, these statements concern to educational path, excellence, success, childcare, and services.

Moreover, the figure 5 delineates the concordance on the noun ‘government’.

The number of frequencies of the noun ‘government’ is 8. They all concern to the activities that need to be achieved by the Government of Québec. In addition, they are activities that aim at creating a provincial institute of education, at adjusting the frequency of learning assessment, at helping, supporting and promoting parental engagement in the education process, at working closely with cultural organizations, at opening a dialogue with commerce and at promoting models of education and education professionals’ success.

On the other hand, the figure 6 presents the concordance on the noun ‘education’.

The number of frequencies of the noun ‘education’ is 7, and it denotes different importances. The discourses stated are on the establishment of alliances between culture and education, on the implementation of actions related to digital technologies, on the development of competences in higher education, on the implementation of vocational training centers, on the inter- ministerial collaboration for the education for children between 0 and 8-years- old, and on the continuity and accessibility of early childhood education.

The next figure, that is the number 7, presents the concordance on the noun ‘services’.

The number of frequencies of the noun ‘services’ is 7. In the analysis, it is related to many other words that express some concerns when it comes to French-Canadian people. So, by ‘services’, the Policy means including specialized resources to improve the provision of integrated services to students with special needs, establishing specialized and integrated services in schools and centers to support students, improving ongoing student services and supporting immigrant ones, provisioning social services, adapting educational services, empowering institutions that provide education services, and complementing youth service centers for child education.

To conclude, the next concordance is on the noun ‘school’, that appears 7 times in the analysis.

In the last concordance analysis, the term ‘school’ is related to 7 sentences. All of them disclose numerous discourses. They are concerned to increasing compulsory school age from 16 to 18 years old, to supporting parents and community representatives who wish to get involved in school life, to launching action plans for school infrastructure, to supporting school

entrepreneurship projects, to creating a core in primary school for the families and education professionals, to publishing a new competency framework for education professionals, and to providing a stimulating school environment based on good practices and successful education models.

Then, the figure 9 demonstrates how Latin American countries’ governments can support ensuring quality education for their peoples. In brief, relationships were made between the Categories A, B, C, D and E and the previous concordance analysis made.

As seen in the previous figure, Latin American countries’ governments can support ensuring quality education for their nations’ peoples when applying and focusing on principles like people’s learning, skills, and competences, the quality in teaching and learning processes, and in learning spaces, the promotion

of equitable development of the people, the minimum conditions to achieve quality education, and the vocational training to foster quality education.

The focus on fostering high-quality education for the people can firstly be related to promoting the students’ skills, schools, education services and education methods and actions. This way, Latin American countries’ governments can take efforts in order to set new initiatives in society to establishing more justice, equity and quality in the educational setting.

Then, when considering the students’ scope, some of the results to be achieved in Latin American countries might be the enhancement of student’s educational path and parenting experience in school, as well as their vocational trainings, knowledge and skills, and support to those ones who have special needs and are from immigrant families.

Now in the school scope, some of the results can be related to increasing compulsory school age from 16 to 18 years old, to supporting parents and community representatives who wish to get involved in school life, to launching action plans for school infrastructure, to supporting school entrepreneurship projects, to creating a core in primary school for the families and education professionals, to publishing a new competency framework for education professionals, and to providing a stimulating school environment based on good practices and successful education models.

When it comes to services, other results may be related to improving the provision of integrated services to students with special needs, establishing specialized and integrated services in schools and centers to support students, improving ongoing student services and supporting immigrant ones, provisioning social services, adapting educational services, empowering institutions that provide education services, and complementing youth service centers for child education.

The last scope is the education one. It comprises education methods and actions. So, its results to Latin American countries can be related to establishing alliances between culture and education by implementing digital technologies and developing competences in different levels of education, to implementing vocational training centers, to the inter-ministerial collaborations for the

education for children between 0 and 8-years-old, and to the continuity and accessibility of early childhood education.

4 Conclusions

This paper aimed at presenting recommendations on high-quality education to Latin American countries’ governments by taking the Policy on Educational Success of Québec as Québec’s main official document to achieve quality education.

It was demonstrated that the Policy on Educational Success of Québec comprises acts that mostly go towards the promotion of equitable development of the people, to people’s learning, skills, and competences, and to the quality in teaching and in learning processes, and in learning spaces. In contrast, the acts that are less significant in the analysis but equally fundamental for the development of society are related to the minimum conditions to achieve quality education, and to the vocational training to foster quality education.

Moreover, it was comprehended that the ensuring of quality education in Latin American countries can immediately be linked to some scopes, like the student, school, service, and education ones.

As it was shown in the beginning of this paper, in Latin American countries there still have remaining issues to be solved when it comes to providing quality education for the people. Notwithstanding, the research finding demonstrates how Latin American countries’ governments can support ensuring quality education for their peoples whether they give special attention to the student, school, service, and education scopes in society.

Acknowledgments

Federal Government of Canada. Gouvernement Fédéral du Canada. Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).

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Author notes