TORONTO - A proposal to combine daycare and kindergarten into a single full-day program in Ontario as early as September, 2010, would not only benefit young students, but their parents, too, education experts said Sunday in advance of a long-anticipated report into all-day kindergarten.
Among the recommendations in a report by Charles Pascal are plans to create full-day "early learning programs" for four-and-five-year-olds and housing daycares inside schools.
"A lot of parents are right now running all over the place trying to patch together services they need for their kids and their families," Pascal said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
The report from Pascal, a former deputy minister of education, comes almost two years after he was appointed to advise the provincial government on how to implement full-day kindergarten.
For the most part, junior and senior kindergarten currently runs a half-day.
More than 25 per cent of children are "significantly" behind their peers when entering Grade 1, the report said. Children who have attended full-day programs before Grade 1 fare better academically and have better social skills.
"This is going to give a big boost to kids and their parents," said Pascal.
Parents, however, would still have a choice about whether their four- and five-year-olds would be enrolled for a full or half-day of kindergarten, or nothing at all.
In Ontario, school is not mandatory until Grade 1.
The long-anticipated report also recommends moving services like daycares into schools for what's described as the "seamless day." Research has shown that children, especially younger children, benefit from fewer transitions between locations.
The report also stipulates that if a group of 15 or more families gets together and asks the school to provide classes before and after the traditional school day, it must be provided.
The move would give parents the option to leave children between the ages of four and 12 from 7:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. at the school -- for a fee. The report does not provide specifics about the cost.
John Campbell, chairman of the Toronto District School Board, applauded the proposal, saying it will be welcomed by many parents.
"With so many households where you have two working parents or if you have a single-parent family where the sole parent is working, they're already looking for these kinds of solutions," said Campbell, whose school board is the largest in Ontario.
The plan does have its problems. It means finding adequate funding to pay additional staff as well as finding space for the influx of students who will spend extra time at school.
For instance, the before and after school program would incorporate the newly designed curriculum and would mean the hiring of additional early childhood educators.
Ideally, the full-day program would start in September, 2010, and be available province-wide within three years, the report said.
Though they support the concept, the Tories warned the province could face a serious time-crunch by trying to implement the system by September, 2010.
"A school year is not a lot of time," Joyce Savoline, education critic for the Progressive Conservatives, said in a telephone interview from her Burlington, Ont., home.
Savoline, who did not have access to the report in advance of its official release Monday, said parents need time to make child care plans for their families.
