Excerpt: "Ontario has become the first jurisdiction in North America to make early learning and child care an entitlement for all children, setting a new bar for child care policy."
October 31, 2018
Posted on UNICEF Canada.
Excerpt: "The report measures the rights and well-being of children in rich countries over the past 18 years. UNICEF compares countries so they can learn and do better. The 2018 UNICEF Report Card 15 is focused on equality in education."
Special thanks to from UNICEF Canada went to Kerry McCuaig and Dr. Emis Akbari, Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development, University of Toronto, for producing data and analysis for early child education in Canada.
Excerpt: "Canada has about 2.4-million children age 5 and younger. If we were to exclude those under 1 year old, because their parents are potentially covered by federal parental leave, that leaves about 1.9- million preschoolers. For those 1.9 million preschoolers we have about 800,000 preschool child care spaces or enough capacity for about 40% of these children."
Excerpt: "Unlike schools, Canada’s current patchwork of child care and preschool programs is primarily delivered as a market service. Access varies, as does quality. Evidence in Canada and elsewhere indicates that mixed delivery of preschool creates access, quality and accountability challenges. Relying on a mix of delivery agents – public, private, non-profit – necessitates negotiating multiple relationships and systems. Public education offers a sturdy platform that avoids, or at least reduces, these challenges. Building public education down to provide universal preschool is an alternative to market delivery."
Excerpt: "This report provides an overview of Canadian provincial and territorial perspectives of outdoor play in child care and kindergarten settings. It reviews curriculum frameworks that guide early childhood practice and the legislative oversight of early childhood environments to assess potential contradictions. While legislation can be a barrier to outdoor play, the paper finds other restrictive factors including educator/parent perceptions, lack of green space, fear of litigation, restrictive standards and funding mechanisms. The overarching barrier to outdoor play is limited access to early childhood programs."
February 10, 2019
Posted on The Conversation.
Excerpt: "Early childhood research anchored in brain development showed that up to a third of students started Grade 1 so far behind they never caught up. By the time they entered school it was both very difficult and very expensive to make up for the foundational skills they missed during their early years."
September 30, 2019
This project aims to foster quality in the Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) sector by identifying evaluations of innovative approaches to ELCC in Canada that could be scaled to spread their impact.
The ELCC Innovation ToolKit identifies innovations in the following areas: ELCC governance; funding; inclusion and equitable access; the learning environment including curriculum, program supports, transitions to kindergarten and parent engagement; the workforce including educator training, professional development, compensation and recognition; and monitoring and accountability.
Governance, administration, service providers, educator training early childhood programs in selected OECD countries.
February 29, 2020
Posted on Early Years Study.
The fourth landmark study, titled Early Years Study 4: Thriving Kids, Thriving Society, led by the Honourable Margaret McCain, builds on over 20 years of research and calls for an annual investment of $8 billion to bring Canada up to the OECD average enrolment rate for early childhood education.
Excerpt: "The COVID-19 virus has changed the channel on child care. No longer a private responsibility borne largely by mothers, it is a social one vital to all those parents who make up the army of first responders in a time of crisis."
Excerpt: "COVID-19 has propelled us into a new epoch for public education. This is a chance to renew the system to meet the challenge, empowering this generation of child survivors to confront the disparities, environmental degradation and the other conditions that gave rise to the pandemic and create a more sustainable and just world."