With the beginning of the school year, this week three additional provinces will be offering public full-day early learning/kindergarten programs for the first time. Ontario, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia will join Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec in offering full school-day programs under an education auspice before compulsory schooling begins; Ontario is the sole province to offer these programs to four year olds. In Ontario some school boards are integrating full school-day early learning programs with before- and after-school care, as per the recommendation of the province's report "With our best future in mind [2]".

Read more about these provincial initiatives from the three governments' websites:

Prince Edward Island kindergarten transition [3]

PEI Department of Education and Early Childhood Development

Ontario full-day early learning [4]

Ontario Ministry of Education

British Columbia full school-day kindergarten [5]

BC Ministry of Education

There has been considerable media interest as Canadian provinces have begun to move to full-school day early learning. See Child Care in the News.

To learn more about programs in Canadian provinces/territories, see the provincial/ territorial chapters [6] of ECEC in Canada 2014.

Many other countries have moved forward in integrating care and education into a single accessible program, using a variety of models. The most notable example, and one about which considerable information is available, is Sweden, where in 1998 preschool -- long an established public program under a social welfare auspice -- became the first step in the education system. To learn more about the Swedish approach to early years provision, see "Pre-school in transition: A national evaluation of the Swedish pre-school [7]", "An overview of the Swedish education system [8]" and the "Curriculum for preschool. [9]"

An excellent UK-produced video about the Swedish approach to blending early childhood education and care is available online, "Early Years: How do they do it in Sweden? [10]".

To learn more about the issue of merging child care and kindergarten into a seamless day, see CRRU's Issue File on full-day early learning [11].