Experts eye 4-year-olds to stem dropout rate
Pre-kindergarten seen as key
From Education Minister Marie Malavoy to the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, the province’s education experts are turning to 4-year-olds in their battle against Quebec’s school dropout rate.
The problem is enormous: Nearly one in three Montreal high-school students leaves school before graduating, ill-equipped to join a workplace that puts a premium on knowledge.
Experts are convinced that trying to stem the flood of dropouts when they are already in high school is tackling the problem at the wrong end. Malavoy, in one of her first statements as education minister, said this month that a better solution is to extend kindergarten to 4-year-olds in disadvantaged areas, and promised to start implementing her plan in September.
The Conseil supérieur, a government-funded advisory body, agreed this week with Malavoy, saying that Quebec needs to focus on preschoolers, offering them high-quality educational services.
In a new report, the council said the province has made real progress over the past 15 years in early childhood care: 98 per cent of 5-year-olds in Quebec were enrolled voluntarily in full-time kindergarten.
Pre-kindergarten is less available and possibly less popular. Among 4-year-olds, only 8 per cent are enrolled in school-based pre-kindergarten, although that figure jumps to 65 per cent for 4-year-olds enrolled in a state-regulated daycare program.
In a warning note, the council cited research saying that fee-paying and non-institutional daycare services in disadvantaged areas tended to be of lesser quality than those in wealthier neighbourhoods, but that state-regulated centres de petite enfance (CPEs) offered a uniform quality wherever they were.
Inter national research shows that children as young as 3 and 4 are helped by early childhood education programs, and the benefits are long-lasting. The most famous of the studies is from the Perry Preschool Project among disadvantaged U.S. children, where for every $1 invested in quality early childhood for 3- and 4-yearolds, the state saved $16 in health, justice and unemployment costs by the time the children turned 40.
Council president Claude Lessard admitted Tuesday that Quebec is having a hard time implanting quality pre-kindergarten services in disadvantaged areas and a hard time persuading parents in those areas to use the services.
“If the mother doesn’t work, she may feel she is a bad mother for sending her 4-year-old to pre-kindergarten,” Lessard said. “She may be afraid of being judged. But nobody worries about that when they send their children to kindergarten,” he said. “We have to help people understand that it helps children and makes their transition to school easier.”
The council is urging the government to extend prekindergarten so that within five years 90 per cent of 4-year-olds will attend highquality state-regulated educational services, with poor neighbourhoods a priority. The province currently pays more than $2 billion a year on daycare services.
Asked where he thought the money would come from to extend pre-kindergarten given that Quebec’s elementary and secondary school system is facing large budget cuts, $142 million this year on top of $300 million already cut, Lessard said the council’s job is to make recommendations. “We’re not in cabinet,” he said. “Obviously as a society there are choices to be made.”