Provinces like Manitoba 'behind the times' on providing full-day kindergarten, expert says

As a parent, Xiaoxiao Du says she's seen the benefits of full-day kindergarten up close — from how the welcoming, play-based approach in Ontario's system helped her kids as they started school, to how the longer day allowed her more flexibility as she finished her degree and later joined the workforce.

Now, as an assistant professor in the University of Manitoba's faculty of education, she said she's also seen the research that backs up the advantages of that model.

"From a parent perspective, it does offer a lot of freedom for parents to do what they need to do," said Du.

"And then research-wise, we have … a wide range of literature supporting [it], indicating there are benefits of full-day kindergarten to support students' academic learning in reading, early writing, number knowledge — and that effect can last."

While some schools in Manitoba have full-day kindergarten, it's among the few Canadian provinces that doesn't offer it across the board.

But experts say the full-day approach has benefits that extend far beyond the classroom, from setting students up to succeed in adulthood to potentially helping deal with labour shortages.

The discussion was sparked again last week, after Winnipeg's Louis Riel School Division announced it's considering raising education property taxes by an extra one per cent to expand full-day kindergarten to all 30 of its elementary schools.

That came just a few years after the Winnipeg School Division, the city's largest, axed its own full-day kindergarten pilot project, saying it didn't deliver the expected benefits on student learning and academic performance.

Kerry McCuaig, a senior policy fellow at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, said it's about time more school divisions start thinking about pivoting to full-day kindergarten, with other countries offering similar programs for kids as young as three.

"So for Canada to have to have an argument about whether or not it should happen when kids are five, I think says something about us being behind the times," she said.

"We need every kid to be their best, you know? And kids get to be their best when they have the best start possible — and part of that is a full day of kindergarten. That's the least we could offer them."

Higher attendance, less strain on resources

During a budget presentation last week where the pitch for full-day kindergarten in Louis Riel School Division was unveiled, superintendent Christian Michalik said every region in Canada except Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon and Nunavut provides full-day kindergarten for all five-year-olds. Some also provide it for four-year-olds, he said.

Manitoba has a patchwork of approaches to kindergarten, though most schools offer it for a half day, five days a week. The Franco-Manitoban School Division is an outlier, having offered full-day kindergarten for years — including to Michalik's own now-adult children, who he said benefited greatly from it.

Those benefits extend beyond just academic outcomes, said McCuaig.

Research suggests the full-day approach improves soft skills, like learning to share and to show empathy. It also suggests attendance improves when kindergarten is full-day, because it reduces the stress of parents having to figure out child care for just a few hours.

All of that means kids who go to full-day kindergarten are also better able to self-regulate, which can help reduce the draw on educational resources for students with behavioural issues later on — a budget item McCuaig said is "almost out of control for most school divisions."

As well, having more time to spend with students during the year means teachers can focus more on play-based learning that kids that age really benefit from, instead of feeling pressure to cram in milestones like learning numbers or how to hold a pencil, she said.

More options for parents

With their kids in school for a full day instead of just a few hours, parents of kindergarteners also have more choice in whether or how often they're able to work, "by virtue of the fact that you … don't need to leave in the middle of the afternoon, or even early afternoon, to pick up kids," said Jonathan Jenner, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Manitoba.

That effect is especially significant for women, who generally speaking are responsible for more child care work than men, Jenner said.

Freeing up people to spend more time in the workforce — or potentially join it — could also help tackle Canada's ongoing labour shortage.

"Giving people more time to work, or at least more time that they could decide to allocate to work, could … help meet labour demand. And that can be a great thing," said Jenner.

Pedro Antunes, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada, said research also suggests there are a number of social benefits from parents having better access to early childhood education and child care, including reducing income inequality and improving outcomes for kids — like decreasing incarceration rates — as they get older.

"These programs are more beneficial at the margin," he said. "In other words, you get more bang for your buck for people who are in those kinds of situations, lower income in particular."

'Benefits us all': expert

But education experts Du and McCuaig both said while a full-day kindergarten program can be beneficial, it has to be done right — with an appropriate curriculum, teachers trained in early childhood education and enough staff.

"If one kindergarten teacher is going to be supporting or in charge of 30 children in a classroom setting, the quality of the program needs to be considered," Du said.

"Having teachers, training teachers, providing those experiences and quality programs — that takes money and that takes time."

But McCuaig said it's a worthwhile investment, whether you have kids in kindergarten or not.

"The most important years of schooling are those early years, right?" she said. 

"And when you do that well, it pays off throughout a child's lifetime — and that benefits us all."