McCuaig – ECE in school

One things that we argue for very strongly in the Early Years Study 3, is that we have this incredible asset called public education, and Canada is really quite unique, in that most parents send their children to public education, so unlike our Anglo-American counterparts, where private education is playing a big, big role, that is not yet so in Canada.   

So we have this system, parents trust it, they send their kids to it, even, you know, in the early years where there’s kindergarten or pre-kindergarten programs available, they aren’t compulsory, almost 100% of children attend. So, our goal is to, is to build on this asset, so that it can accommodate younger and younger, younger and younger children.  And, why we go to education is, number one, it’s there, there are schools in every neighbourhood, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel because education comes with its, with an infrastructure, with public financing, you know, usually education is the second most expensive thing in anybody’s budget, any provincial budget, and it comes with public confidence, so instead of starting a whole new program from scratch, we can build on everything that public education has.   

And we recognize that there is some nervousness amongst stakeholders in the Early Childhood field, that if we move all of us into public education, well, that is so big, and we’re so small, is that we’ll be overwhelmed.  But yet we have the evidence, and quite substantial evidence, that both in Canada, and the U.K. and Australia, that seems to indicate that when you bring early education into the public system, is that you begin to get schools that are more responsive, not only to young children and families, but to children throughout the grades, you get education that looks at the whole child, rather than at its academic and cognitive skills, and you begin to get this, it becomes a social network for families and educators, so really the school becomes that all-important hub that every community needs if it’s going to be healthy.