Don Drummond will propose eliminating full day kindergarten
I will get to some evidence as to why killing the still-not-completely-implemented full day kindergarten in english public school boards is a really bad idea. I swear. But first, some invective.
Can we propose eliminating Don Drummond’s report instead? Yes. Let’s. Full-day kindergarten is about the only progressive measure the McGuinty government has actually delivered on and they’ve hired an ex-bank economist to kill it before it’s even finished. That’s just fabulous. For the sake of half a billion dollars. That does seem like significant money. But the province’s overall deficit is $16 billion, full day kindergarten is three per cent of that.
Three per cent is certainly not nothing. But consider that this is the same province that has done next to nothing (apart from issuing a media statement) about the fact that the federal government is about to leave them with a $1 billion bill for implementing the omnibus crime bill.
They won’t pay to put kids in school, but they will pay to put grownups in jail.
Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals took power in Ontario by promising social progress and an end to the vindictive, selfish rule of the Harris/Eves Tories. I expect voters had no greater hope than “less suffering” but the Libs did actually have some good platform planks. Full day kindergarten for english school boards (the french language boards already do full day kindergarten) was one of them.
It would have been a legacy item for McGuinty. I suppose it still could be if they decide to jettison Drummond’s report. But full day kindergarten is a big deal.
Here’s the Calgary Herald quoting one study of Ontario’s (halting, incomplete effort to implement full-day kindergarten:
Ontario’s investment in full-day kindergarten will produce a return of $2.42 for every dollar invested, compared with $1.47 for every dollar invested in infrastructure.
In that article, they were, by the way, backing Alberta’s Tory Premier Alison Redford’s initiative to implement – you guessed it – full day kindergarten.
If you need more proof about the economic benefits of early childhood education in general, see this Laurie Monsebraaten article in the Toronto Star about how Québec’s provincial day care system pays for itself and then some. For every dollar Québec puts into its child care program, $1.50 comes back: $1.04 to the province and $0.44 to the feds.
Yes, full day learning as the child care experts call it, is a timid half-measure that has caused much disruption among the patchwork of community, city, church or parent-run day care centres that have grown to try – however inadequately – to meet the need for early childhood education. Yes, McGuinty should have copied the Québec system.
But for even the timid, bland McGuinty government, full-day kindergarten is a no brainer.
Killing it will consign him to the ranks of eminently forgettable Ontario provincial premiers who’ve never found a course they couldn’t stay.
February 13th, 2012 at 8:38 am
Hard to fathom that little NB has full-day kindergarten and Ontario does not. Kindergarten was half-day in Ontario when I attended it in 1968-9. As you say Chris, full-day kindergarten is a no brainer.
February 14th, 2012 at 5:38 pm
I am confused it has been reported that full day kindegarten cost 3 billion a year, which is crazy. What is the true number, I guess we will see tomorrow?