International Resources WEEK 5

This week, I had the privelege of learning more about Canada from an excellent resource, A. Betim. 

LEGISLATION

 Each province in Canada has its own sets of rule and regulations to monitor licensed child care program, be it centre based or home based.

In the province of Ontario, we are regulated by the Day Nurseries Act. This act outlines room sizes in relation to the number of children, staff qualifications required in early childhood programs, ratios of children and staff, health and safety requirements, etc. You can browse these websites to see what the Day Nurseries Act looks like:

One is the official legislation: http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/regs/english/elaws_regs_900262_e.htm
The other is an interactive website for program operators: http://childcarelearning.on.ca/

One major change is that licensing and regulations, historically managed by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, is now being passed to the Ministry of Education, mostly because of a new initiative called Full-Day Learning (see below).

TRENDS:

Full-Day Learning

 The field of Early Childhood Education is still struggling to be as widely recognized as formal schooling, such as kindergarten. There seems to exist a perception that children in early childhood program “just play” as opposed to learn. Advocacy is strong. It is not until 2007 that the College of Early Childhood Educators came to be. Today the college of ECE is self-regulatory body striving to promote high standards within the profession. Their website is http://collegeofece.on.ca/Pages/default.aspx

 Early Childhood Education is formally defined between the ages of 0 to 12 years-old.

Historically children attended ECE programs, infant to preschoolers, before entering Junior or Senior Kindergarten at 4 or 5 years-old respectively. Then there were after-school programs and summer camps to meet the needs of children 5 to 12 years-old.

The advantages of ECE programs is that children can attend the program year-round, full day, including summers and march breaks. This has changed dramatically with the Full-Day Learning Kindergarten, where Junior and Senior Kindergarten are now being offered Full-Day programs similar to elementary school, and most school are encouraged to offer before and after school programs for children whose parents work early or finish work later. The idea is to create a seamless day but the limitation is that the parents are required to make their own childcare arrangements in the summer months and during March break or PD days when schools are closed.

More information about the Full-Day Learning can be found at http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/kindergarten/

With the FDL initiative, early childhood programs enrollments declined as elementary schools started their FDL programs and now we mostly serve a younger population, namely children 0 to 4.8 rather than 0 to 6, when children can go from ECE program directly to grade 1.

These changes caused a great number of programs to think creatively to fill up their preschool programs or open up Toddler programs to meet the demands of the community and survive.

The FDL is still fairly new and parents and the community are still advocating to see the children with special needs reflected in the strategic planning and directions of the programs.

 Funding

ECE programs (licensed daycares and home daycares) are funded 80% by the City and 20% by the Province. Up to now, the funding and subsidies components have always been managed by the City of Ottawa but now much of the responsibilities are being transferred to the Ministry of Education. They may purchase services from the city to do the work but nothing concrete has been put into place yet.

The city of Ottawa is the only city in Ontario where subsidized spaces are allocated for each centre rather than to specific families. For instance, in my program we have 39 subsidized spaces. Regardless whereas a child leaves the program we always have a subsidized spot to offer to another family. This is about to change soon, likely at the beginning of 2012, where Ottawa will follow the rest of the province and the subsidies will follow the families. If one of our children leave our program, the subsidy goes with them. We then need to find another family that has a subsidy or charge for the space used. This new systems will put a lot of strain in programs located in high risk areas or a neighborhood consisting of subsidized housing and poverty because we are not likely to find families with resources to pay for a daycare space. Once again, ECE programs are asked to think creatively to keep their doors open and programs running in face of policies changes at governmental levels.

 Curriculum

ECE in Ontario have various models of curriculums depending of the philosophy of each program: Headstart, High Scope, Waldorf, Montessori, Play Based, Emergent Curriculum, Reggio Emilia, etc. The Kindergarten model is also a different approach to curriculum but serves the same purpose, educate children.

A new trend is the Early Learning for Every Child Today: A Framework for Ontario Early Childhood Settings. This framework describes how young children learn and develop, and provides a guide for curriculum in Ontario’s early childhood settings, including child care centres, regulated home child care, nursery schools, kindergarten, Ontario Early Years Centres, family resource programs, parenting centres, readiness centres, family literacy, child development programs in Community Action Program for Children, Healthy Babies Healthy Children and early intervention services. The idea with the new framework is the regardless to the curriculum model the program uses, every ECE program in Ontario still offer high quality programs and follow similar principles.

You can download the Guide and browse the framework at http://www.children.gov.on.ca/htdocs/English/topics/earlychildhood/early_learning_for_every_child_today.aspx

PHOTOS:  I chose to add this photo because Owen and Ella turn 3 tomorrow!!!  (I WAS HUGE, but I guess you should be with triplets! This was the day before I had Owen, Ella, and our Angel.) The second photo is of their first Christmas with Noah, Mekhi, Masen, and Maddy.  I love my family!