Despite a huge investment in preschool funding, school readiness scores have remained flat for more than a decade.
Locating early learning programs in schools provides stable programming infrastructure and allows for potential collaborations between early childhood educators and teachers.
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The pandemic has meant some parents have to just drop their young children at the gate and go, without seeing the classroom and talking to teachers.
Canada is preventing provinces and territories from using federal child-care dollars to transform schools into one-stop centres for young children.
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The system has several elements and many problems. Making it fit for purpose will take a lot of work and even more resources than those that have just been announced.
Marilyn Campbell, Queensland University of Technology and Yan Qi, Queensland University of Technology
This week’s announcements will add to the need to train more early childhood workers and to ensure they are more diverse in a way that better reflects our multicultural society.
A chasm has opened up between early childhood learning and the first years of compulsory schooling. Kids go from playing to being tested in the blink of an eye, and their learning is poorer for it.
Some preschoolers are encouraged to bring in their favorite toy or stuffed animal, while others risk having it confiscated.
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When students are allowed to bring personal items for show and tell, it can build their senses of self-worth, belonging and control. But poor kids often don’t get that opportunity.
Pre-K students are more likely to be expelled than any K-12 grade.
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Early childhood education and care centres, which includes childcare and preschool, are part of our village. They form a support network established to ensure parents’ and children’s lifelong success.
Taking care of little ones is physically demanding work.
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The 2021-22 budget includes funding for 15 hours per week of free preschool education for all children in the year before school. This is great, but we need more detail.
High-quality preschools are both play-based and academic.
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Researchers mapped the variation in preschool policies, and how they impact on what families pay, across all states and territories. Some places charge much higher fees than others.