Beyond the many known benefits of outdoor education, COVID-19 has highlighted the outdoors as an environment which mitigates the risk of spreading airborne viruses.
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Planning outdoor early learning and child care has implications for training and recruiting educators as well as for planning, developing and funding physical spaces.
Child care insecurity can increase stress and anxiety and decrease quality of life.
Damir Cudic/E+ Collection via Getty Images
Child care insecurity has received much less attention than food insecurity, but it is similarly complex. And affordability is only one part of the problem.
The stay-at-home order appears to have been mostly beneficial for parents, who reported improvement in their co-parenting experience despite the many challenges they faced.
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The idea that children suffer from going to childcare and having mothers who work is outdated nonsense – and the research backs it up.
While there have been calls to increase support for women, particularly mothers, it would seem that no one is asking fathers to step up.
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Despite the disproportionate burden mothers have faced during lockdown, encouraging parents to share child care and housework more equally is almost never suggested as part of the solution.
In expanding early learning and care, Canada must addresses a current crisis is retaining and recruiting educators.
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Beyond addressing key staffing issues, developing high-quality early childhood programs must involve using school boards to expand access and grow spaces while offering more affordable fees.
Profits have no place in the care of our children and aging parents and grandparents.
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Is the budget really as “women friendly” as the Morrison government would like us to believe?
In Québec, the biggest child care provider by far is schools. Here, children raise their hands at a care centre in Montréal in August 2006.
CP PHOTO/Ian Barrett
As provinces and territories beyond Québec develop early learning and care plans, they should be aware of the pitfalls of taking shortcuts in response to parent demand.
What happens in early years matter for a child’s lifetime.
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President Biden wants to use his $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan to shore up child and home care. A scholar explains why that kind of care is just as critical as roads and bridges.
Our analysis suggests the Morrison government’s child-care subsidy changes won’t do much to improve the affordability of child care for many families on low to middle incomes.
Children play at the Children’s Centre at Capilano University in Capilano, B.C.
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Canada has an opportunity to become a world leader in early childhood education. With monumental federal support, this is the time to build a sustainable and relevant early education system.
A crossing guard stops traffic as students arrive at École Woodward Hill Elementary School, in Surrey, B.C., Feb. 23, 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Comprehensive early childhood education, mental health support, internet connectivity and post-secondary funding are part of reducing the consequences of poverty so all students may excel.
Adjunct Professor, Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at Ontario Institute for the Study of Education (OISE) and Senior Policy Fellow at the Atkinson Centre, University of Toronto