Understanding school competencies

In Quebec, a school’s mission is threefold:

• To provide instruction (to foster students’ cognitive development and mastery of knowledge)
• To socialize (to teach students how to live together in harmony)
• To provide qualifications (to make it possible for all students to achieve educational success, while facilitating their integration into society and the workforce)

To reach these objectives, the province created a program that is based on the development of two competencies: cross-curricular competencies and subject-specific competencies.

Cross-curricular competencies help your child develop their intellectual, methodological, personal, social, and communication-related skills. In addition, these competencies enable them to adapt to a variety of situations, to continue to learn throughout their lives, and to better understand the world around them.

Currently, Quebec’s education program contains nine cross-curricular competencies:

1. Uses information: Once they have found information, students must be able to process it, assess its value, and synthesize it so they can make use of it. 
2. Solves problems: Students must be able to explore multiple possible answers and formulate different hypotheses in order to find a satisfactory solution.
3. Exercises critical judgment: While considering only the facts, students must be able to put things into perspective and form and express an opinion. 
4. Uses creativity: Using the resources at their disposal, students must find original ways to carry out an idea or concept. 
5. Adopts effective work methods: Students must be able to take notes, plan their work, and gather the materials required to complete a task. 
6. Uses information and communications technologies: Students must master certain technologies and use these technologies in their learning. 
7. Achieves their potential: While taking their place among others, students have to recognize their personal characteristics and use their personal resources. 
8. Cooperates with others: By participating in classroom activities, working with others, and interacting with an open mind, students must contribute to team efforts and camaraderie. 
9. Communicates appropriately: In addition to learning various forms of communication and their codes and conventions, students must choose and adjust their mode of communication according to the reactions of their target audience.

Subject-specific competencies are the specific skills that students must develop in each subject. They call on the students’ knowledge and are grouped into the following five subject areas:

• Languages
• Mathematics, science, and technology
• Social sciences
• Arts education
• Personal development

Here are some of the subject-specific competencies for the main school subjects:

Languages (French, Language of Instruction):

• Reads various types of texts
• Writes various types of texts
• Interacts orally
• Etc.

Mathematics:

• Solves a situational problem
• Applies mathematical concepts and processes
• Communicates by using mathematical language
• Etc.

Science and technology:

• Proposes explanations for or solutions to scientific or technological problems
• Makes the most of scientific and technological tools, objects, and procedures
• Communicates in the languages used in science and technology
• Etc.

The Progression of Learning is a tool intended to assist teachers in planning the learning that their students are to acquire. It also provides further information on the essential knowledge that students must acquire and be able to use in each grade.