RESOURCES

How to Remove the Barriers to Child Care Expansion - A Survey of Non-Profit and Public Child Care Licensees in Ontario

The messages we hear from these survey results comes through loud and clear.

• Governments can and should act now to facilitate expansion of child care to meet parents’ needs (and to fulfill the promises they have made to parents).
• Child care providers need government action to attract staff to early childhood education as a career - to raise wages in order to recruit and retain qualified educators.
• Not-for-profit and public licensees need guarantees that operating funding will be available if they do expand; These licensees need access to capital funding, especially a program of capital grants, to kickstart the process of expansion.
• And these not-for-profit and public child care operators need municipalities, school boards and provincial and federal governments to identify lands and buildings suitable and available for expansion."

Access the report. 

Early Childhood Education Report Evaluation: Monitor, Assess, Share - The Early Childhood Education Report

In October 2021, the Atkinson Centre commissioned an evaluation to inform future editions of the ECER in the context of past experiences and in light of the intended development of a Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care system. This new policy direction and accompanying increase in public investment will require comprehensive data collection and monitoring to promote children’s equitable access to quality programming and provide accountability for public funding.

Access the evaluation,  Monitor, Assess, Share - The Early Childhood Education Report

Canada’s Children Need a Professional Early Childhood Education Workforce

Canada's child care workforce needs a bill of rights embedded in pending federal legislation, says a new report released by the researchers at the University of Toronto.

"In the race to lower parent fees and increase access, governments across Canada often overlook the people who provide the care. Yet the success of Canada's emerging early learning and child care system will depend on its workforce," says Dr. Emis Akbari, an author on the report.

"The status of the early childhood education workforce, and the quality of programming where small children spend their days are interdependent," reads the report. "Just as children's environments can support or impede their learning, educators' work environments can promote or hinder educator practices."

For a sector hit hard by COVID,  losing up to 21 percent of its staff, backfilling vacant positions takes precedence alongside finding an additional 32,000 educators, plus the support staff needed to meet expansion goals. Yet efforts to attract and retain educators are proving ineffective.

Across the care economy there is a reluctance to recognize that creating and maintaining a professional workforce requires a package of interventions to create inviting working conditions. These include wages and benefits reflecting the value of the work, resources and access to experts to do the job well, and opportunities for ongoing professional learning.

"Few jurisdictions have adopted this comprehensive approach," says Dr. Emis Akbari,  one of the report's authors. "Failure to do so will compromise the success of the emerging early learning and child care program."

Access the report

What is Early Childhood Education?

Is Full-Day Kindergarten a Success?

We be looked back at more than a decade of full-day kindergarten in Ontario. How well has it worked? Were the original concerns about it warranted? And has it accomplished its goals. With guests Jane Bertrand of OISE at the University of Toronto; the Toronto Star's Kristin Rushowy, and the University of Toronto's Elizabeth Dhuey.

Watch

The Case for Early Learning and Child Care in Canada: A short-and long-term economic policy winner

Early learning and child care supports parental labour force participation. It is the social infrastructure we need to accelerate the economic recovery, build increased economic resiliency and ensure Canada is optimising its labour force at a time of aging demographics. Public investment in early learning and child care delivers material and sustained economic and social benefits that will increase Canadian prosperity and improve competitiveness. The benefits outweigh the costs -the estimated return on every dollar of government investment is between $1.5 to $6.

Continue reading.

Early Years Study Podcast

The evidence is crystal clear. When we invest in our children, we all benefit. When Canadian children thrive, Canada thrives. Since 1999, the Honourable Margaret Norrie McCain and the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation have been gathering the research and developing a bold vision for supporting our youngest citizens and their families. In this series of conversations, we speak with the researchers, educators and economists who have contributed their unique and important perspectives to Early Years Study 4. Each conversation is interesting and compelling on its own but, when combined, the call to action is loud and clear: high quality, early childhood education for ALL."

Access the entire series.

Early Learning Nation Video

Atkinson Centre Videos

The Atkinson Centre’s YouTube channel includes several videos that focus on early childhood education. 

Science of Early Child Development (SECD) Videos 

Encyclopedia for Early Childhood Development Video 

StoryPark Video 

The Offord Centre