INCREASE ECE PAY

Did you know that early childhood educators only get paid $18.61 per hour if they have ECE 3, meaning two years of education? That is only $37,000 per year. This pay is barely enough to raise a family, buy your own house, or to be able to enjoy extra-curricular activities.

As an early childhood educator myself, for the amount of work that we do, we are very underpaid. Early childhood educators do not do their job for the income, but because they love seeing children learn and grow. The first five years of a child’s life is the most important. Educators have a huge impact on the child by helping them learn appropriate behaviour, boundaries, empathy, independence, social skills, and much more.

Just like educators in the school system, we spend more hours a week with these children than their parents do. Similar to school education, we implement activities that will help children grow in all aspects. This includes arts and crafts, gross and fine motor movements, speech and language development, cognitive development and social/ emotional development. On the other hand, we are not similar to school educators, because we’re paid significantly less for loving and helping children achieve their developmental milestones.

Early childhood educators have so much responsibility when it comes to teaching children. There is so much pressure to provide a high-quality environment for them. The lack of recognition for those that work with children is very disappointing, and I hope the government will keep trying to increase the income and give the early childhood educators more recognition for their instrumental role in child development.

Jenny McCarron, UPEI student, Montague