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One in four Ontario children entering Grade 1 has a learning difficulty and the solution is seamless, universal pre-school, according to a report released today.
"There is a vast amount of literature that indicates those early learning years are a key determinant for a child, both in their youth and in adulthood," said Michael Cooke, one of the co-authors of the report, released by the Atkinson Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
"I think the strongest call here is for universality."
According to research in the report, only 10 per cent of Ontario children has access to pre-schools.
Even families who can afford to place their children in day care often find the facilities are completely booked and have long waiting lists.
"The vast majority of them are in some kind of ad-hoc child-care situation," Cooke said.
Besides the call for a universal system, the report also calls for a seamless system, in which day cares and kindergarten classes collaborate with each other to provide more comprehensive learning programs.
"I think the main barriers to accomplishing something like this are the inertia of the existing patchwork system, and the provincial government is in the position to break that logjam," said Daniel Keating, another author of the report.
The report was written by Cooke and Marjorie McColm of George Brown College, and Keating of the University of Toronto, and centred on Toronto kindergarten and day-care classes.
The federal government recently boosted funding for early learning by $58.2 million and Prime Minister Paul Martin has said a priority of the new government will be a new national child care program with $5 billion in funding.
Andrew Weir, a spokesman for the provincial Ministry of Children's Services, said upgrading the current system is among the top priorities for both Minister Marie Bountrogianni and Premier Dalton McGuinty.
"The premier and the minister feel very strongly that child care and education need to be looked at as a continuous set of services that enable children to receive high quality learning programs and then transition smoothly into school," Weir said.
- reprinted from the Canadian Press