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| Plan for all-day kindergarten in BC leaves many perplexed |
| Education |
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Written by Andrea Mrozek, manager of research and communications at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada On September 1, 2009, British Columbia announced the updated budget would include $151 million for all-day kindergarten for the province’s approximately 40,000 five-year-olds, starting in 2010. The same budget announced a $2.8 billion dollar deficit and tax increases through the new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). The province is framing the move to all-day kindergarten as one that is necessarily beneficial for children. This is also true of other jurisdictions with similar plans, like Ontario, where Premier Dalton McGuinty aims to roll out full-day kindergarten, also starting in 2010. However, that there are numerous shortcomings to full-day care is something that even stakeholders in British Columbia couldn’t miss. Some expressed concern that education programs would be expanded to younger ages as core funding for existing programs is removed. “Many of us were actually mystified about the announcement, given the cutbacks in all sorts of spheres and the loss, for example, of the annual facilities grants for school districts,” Michael McEvoy, greater Victoria school trustee, told the Times Colonist. And while $151 million may sound like a lot of money, when it comes to care for younger ages, it will not be near enough for quality. Quebec’s example demonstrates how the price tag for so-called universal daycare programs increases exponentially over time. When that program began in 1997 it was funded at $250 million annually. By 2004 the cost was $1.4 billion annually. The move toward full-day kindergarten should rightly be considered an extension of the daycare debate. Having failed to secure a national daycare strategy at the federal level, daycare activists are looking toward the provinces. In Ontario, the stated intent behind the full-day kindergarten plan is to provide care to younger and younger ages, with schools providing the infrastructure as community hubs. However, the reality of such programs is that they remove choice from parents by preferentially funding only one type of care. Seventy-eight per cent of parents say they prefer to have a spouse or family member care for their child, over and above a competent caregiver. Most importantly, the social science does not show benefits to full-day institutionalization for our youngest children. While research shows there can be some benefits to more care for some disadvantaged children, there can also be long-term drawbacks in terms of poor behavioural outcomes. Oft-cited studies showing benefits of “universal” programs fail to mention that these studies were small-scale, very expensive and involved time with children and their mothers in the home. In short, there can be no broad application from this type of study to programs conducted on a provincial level. Endorsement of full-day kindergarten at any time and in any province should be viewed with skepticism. The current move in British Columbia is more troubling, given the province’s precarious financial situation. Children and families in general are not well served by this recent budget, which will see family taxes rise to pay for all-day kindergarten, while withdrawing funding from other areas. |
