Oh, look! An excellent oped in today’s Ottawa Citizen by one A. Mrozek, about the new all-day “learning” program being somewhat less flexible than people were led to believe. Here’s the, ah, money quote:
So how exactly is the Ontario Ministry of Education legislating choice out of existence?
For starters, simply by introducing a monolithic taxpayer funded plan — legitimate and regulated child care providers can’t compete. When the government subsidizes a service, it means others are put out of business.
All-day kindergarten also takes five-year-olds out of existing centres. These children are a day-care’s bread and butter. Care of five-year-olds is substantially cheaper than infant care, which runs into the tens of thousands of dollars annually. Since no child-care centre could possibly charge parents the true infant price, they have balanced their businesses by charging less than the real cost for younger kids and more for older ones. The older ones who will now enter the “free” state centres.
Families with a spouse who stays home are, as usual, totally pooched. Their taxes will rise for a service they don’t ever choose to use. Pascal-plan advocates swear up and down the block we can fund the new system, parents at home and everything in between. The problem is they haven’t told anyone where the money tree is growing.
It bears repeating, again and again, just how expensive these programs are. Costed out, the full Pascal plan comes to $6.1 billion annually. All-day kindergarten rings in at a likely $1.8 billion annually. If money spent on all-day kindergarten went to parents instead, it would come out to more than $9,000 per child, annually.
Indeed. But Andrea, you forgot one thing: Parents wouldn’t know what to do with that money. Better let the government manage it.
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I’m not sure what my stand is. We recently looked into child care here and were quoted $360/wk for our 3 and 2 year old girls. Other centres closer to our physical address simply didn’t have the room, and the waiting lists were upwards of 1 year. The cost was more than a little steep for our pockets, so I’m now in the option of working part-time around my spouses’ schedule to keep the girls at home (but at the expense of a little less family-time with the 4 of us). I think I would approve of a government funded day care. In Ireland, my spouses’ home country, child care providers receive training for a fee to become a qualified state provider. This has allowed for many people (especially stay at home moms), to start their own business and still work from home in most cases. I think the cost for the parents of attending children was generally 9 Euro/day for each child, but I feel I could be missing the big picture on this in the Canadian situation.
I thought I would post the link to the National Childminding Assoc. of Ireland, maybe this is a good template for other countries to follow? http://www.childminding.ie/
In spite of my high esteem for the author, I’m struggling about the choice question here. All parents have a choice in childcare, whether their is government funded all-day learning or not. I can choose to take my child out of the system completely and homeschool, use a private school, or delay entry until grade 1. I can send my child to a school that has full-day learning, or for the time being, one that has half-day learning. And regardless, the before and after-care option is just that – an option for working parents who want to take advantage of it. If they prefer to use another caregiver, there is no reason they couldn’t. That aspect of the new program isn’t really new – lots of public schools offer it now. I understand the cost issues – but of course private preschools/kindergartens and certainly daycares cost a whole lot of money! I will certainly spend more than $9000 on my child’s care this year.
As a parent who has recently struggled with the childcare question and who sees her child benefit from an incredibly gifted and dedicated early-childhood educator at a publicly funded playgroup, I value the initiative to prioritize early childhood education. It may not be a perfect solution, but then I’m not sure the perfect solution is really clear.