News & Stories: Publications

Excerpt: "Margaret Wente contends the Education Minister fudged the numbers in her September announcement on the benefits of full day kindergarten for children. The true story she claims lies the ‘full report’ released by Queen’s University. (“Ontario's $1.5-billion kindergarten hoax”. Nov 30, Globe and Mail) Ms. Wente is referring to two different reports with two different purposes. Both were commissioned by the Ministry as part of the same evaluation."

Excerpt: "While full day kindergarten is a policy milestone, on schedule to serve over 260,000 four- and five-year-olds, unfortunately our government stopped short of implementing the bold vision for school operated early learning and care described in With Our Best Future In Mind. Fewer than 20 per cent of Ontario’s children 12-years and younger have access to regulated care. The dearth of safe, affordable child care options literally endangers children’s lives, curtails parents’ work opportunities and costs the economy in work/family conflicts. As currently organized, child care creates a low wage sector reliant on social transfers."

Excerpt: "A group of diverse research and policy experts in early child development met to discuss the recently released findings on the implementation and impact of Full Day kindergarten in Ontario. As supporters of FDK, participants were interested in developing strategies to address the media backlash that followed the release of the ‘Meta-Perspective’ document and to ensure the program would be evaluated fairly and effectively over time."

On December 3, 2013, the Ontario government introduced the Child Care Modernization Act, to "take steps to strenghthen oversight of the province's unlicensed child care sector while increasing access to licensed child care options for families."

Excerpt: "Across Canada it is a familiar scene, parents lined up in the cold to get their kids into a preferred slot at a preschool. Whether motivated by a desire to give their child a head start for school or the need for care so they can work, the challenge is the same - too many children for too few good spots. But in the Northwest Territories the scene is changing. Publicly funded schools are filling the breach."

Excerpt: "Newfoundland and Labrador will become the newest members of the Full Day Kindergarten club starting in 2016. The province’s March 27, 2014 budget includes a plan for new capital spending to retrofit schools for 5-year-olds and the hiring of 140 additional teachers.

This is a quick look at kindergarten in the rest of Canada."

Excerpt: "Atkinson Centre faculty took aim at the slanted manner applied to reporting on the impact of full-day kindergarten for 4- and 5-year olds in Ontario. The article ignores the significant benefits of full-day kindergarten to zero in on the flat lining of reading, writing and numeracy skills for one group in the study."

Excerpt: "A number of jurisdictions are raising the salaries of Early Childhood Educators this year but all allocate more funding to qualified staff as a way to build a professional workforce. Ontario’s announcement doesn’t appear to include this differential. At $2 an hour over two years, Ontario’s raise is comparable to adjustments in Quebec, PEI and Newfoundland but less than the $6/hour going to trained ECEs in the NWT."

Excerpt: "The bidding for child care in the Ontario election campaign started at $269-million with the Liberals, dropped to $100-million by the NDP and vanished by the time it got to the Tories. Surprisingly advocates don’t ask the NDP leader why she killed the budget to come back with $169-million less than what was initially on the table."

Excerpt: "Can Ontario's universal full-day kindergarten program help to level the playing field? The list of possibilities is long: closing the gap of language experience of kids living in poverty, reaching all vulnerable kids, including those in the middle class, contributing support to families who need child care, and ensuring that care and education are combined in high quality programs that boost overall child development as well as academic skills and economic success. Research has shown that many of these goals can be accomplished by high quality universal early childhood programs."

Excerpt: "For Emis Akbari, a post-doc at OISE’s Atkinson Centre, writing a children’s book was never a career aspiration. Reconnecting with childhood friends Brian and Laura Veloso via Facebook, she learned that their third child Owen, now six, had been born with Hyperplasmic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), a rare and complex congenital heart defect in which the left side of the heart is critically underdeveloped."

Excerpt: "The immediate and long-term benefits of quality early childhood eduacation (ECE) for children and society are well documented. Early childhood educaiton is a job creator in its own right, while supporting parents as they work or upgrade their skills."