Excerpts from the summary:
The network of daycare services in Quebec has seen significant expansion since 1997 and the government's adoption of its policy on reduced-contribution daycare services. The number of places in regulated daycare rose from a little over 78,000 in 1997 to over 190,000 in June 2005.
One of the objectives of this policy is to improve equality of opportunity by providing all Quebec children access to a daycare environment that enhances their social and cognitive development. This report provides a unique perspective on whether that objective is being met. After reviewing the comprehensive family policy adopted by Quebec in 1997, Japel, Tremblay and Côté present the results of a study undertaken to evaluate the quality of services offered in more than 1,500 daycare settings and the quality of services received by children according to their socio-economic status.
The results of the evaluation show that:
- The majority of the daycare settings (61 percent) that were rated met the criteria for minimal quality, that is, they ensured the health and safety of children, but their educational component was minimal.
- Among the daycare settings rated, 12 percent were of inadequate quality.
- One-quarter of the daycare settings (27 percent) provided services whose quality was good, very good or excellent, that is, they offered services appropriate to the children's stage of development and constituted a stimulating and educational environment.
- The early childhood centres (centres de la petite enfance, or CPEs) generally offered better quality service than the other types of setting. Thus, 35 percent of centre-based CPEs and 29 percent of home-based CPEs, versus only 14 percent of for-profit daycares and 10 percent of unregulated home-based daycares, were rated as good quality.
- Conversely, 27 percent of for-profit daycares and 26 percent of unregulated home-based settings, versus 6 percent of centre-based CPEs and 7 percent of home-based CPEs, were inadequate in terms of quality.
- The children who attended daycare were generally from more privileged backgrounds than the children who did not.
- The overall quality of the daycare settings attended by children from less privileged families was significantly lower than that of those attended by children from more privileged families.