Childcarepolicy.net

As provinces and territories move towards $10 a day child care, they have committed themselves to creating new funding systems that implement cost controls on child care operators.  You’re probably wondering what the heck that means. Well, child care in Canada outside Quebec is being transformed from being funded mostly by parent fees to being funded mostly by direct funding from the government to child care operators.  In return for the provision of specific services, child care operators get operating funding, often known as supply-side funding.   These child care operators also commit to lowering their parent fees, eventually down to …

Continue reading “Cost Controls and Supply-Side Funding: What Does Quebec Do?“

Not-for-profit and public services are at the heart of Ontario child care.  Overall, they care for more than three-quarters of our children in licensed child care.  For children 0-5 years of age, that number has been 70% of children compared to 30% in commercial child care arrangements. I guess that’s why Ontario didn’t fuss too much about agreeing with the federal government that this percentage – at least 70% not-for-profit and public – would stay the same when licensed child care moves to $10 a day by 2026.  In March 2022, Ontario signed an agreement with the federal government to …

Continue reading “Is Ontario About to Violate the Early Learning and Child Care Agreement it Signed?“

This table below supports the chart in my presentation to the recent (Jan 5, 2023) Building Blocks for Child Care webinar on child care expansion in Ontario. It is posted nearby on this website. The table and chart show the essential problem behind recruitment and retention problems of early childhood educators. Their wages are too low to attract many more educators. In essence, the average wage paid to early childhood educators is much lower than the hourly wages paid to workers in other occupations requiring a college education. Early childhood educators are paid as if they had only a high …

Continue reading “Wages of Early Childhood Educators and Assistants in Ontario”

Young women and men make career decisions early in life based upon their capabilities, their interests and the amount of money they might expect to earn.  If there are shortages of early childhood educators, wage levels need to be increased to recruit more educators and retain the ones you have. Why do we have a huge problem recruiting and retaining staff in licensed child care across Canada?  Fundamentally, it is because the wages of early childhood educators and assistants are not competitive with other occupations that require a college education.  Simple as that, really. This first table shows the latest …

Continue reading “Are the Wages of Early Childhood Educators Competitive With Other Occupations?”

How much do Early Childhood Educators earn?  Everyone knows that their wages are low – too low – but it’s hard to find a reliable source of data to make wage comparisons.  One very interesting data source is a Government of Canada web site called Job Bank (www.jobbank.gc.ca).  It’s a web site designed to help people find jobs and plan their careers by providing information.  And it has a lot of data on many different occupations in many different geographic locations in Canada. The data on Early Childhood Educators comes from the Labour Force Survey, a monthly survey conducted by …

Continue reading “How much do Early Childhood Educators earn?”

Canada has a crisis on its hands – a child care workforce crisis.  Already, child care operators across the country are unable to find staff; rooms are closing and centres are closing because of the inability to attract and retain early childhood educators.  That’s BEFORE the estimated need for 60,000 new early childhood educators as we move to $10 a day child care.  Australia is not the first country that springs to mind when looking for child care policies to emulate.  For instance, Australia funds child care with vouchers that encourage the growth of the for-profit sector and lead to …

Continue reading “Child Care Wages and Workforce Strategies – Looking at Australia: What Do They Have That We Need?”

These (link below in next paragraph) are slides from a recent webinar presentation I made along with colleagues from Équipe de recherche Qualité des contextes éducatifs de la petite enfance at UQAM. You can listen to the French version of my talk  https://youtu.be/R-JIAjvfQew or the whole webinar https://qualitepetiteenfance.uqam.ca/evenement/leducation-a-la-petite-enfance-sinvite-dans-la-campagne-electorale-27-septembre-2022/ But, I have also reproduced most of that talk in English here: Christa Japel has also done similar work here https://childcarecanada.org/blog/learning-experience-access-and-quality-qu%C3%A9bec%E2%80%99s-profit-child-care