Study provides food for thought

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/03/2012 (5134 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While it’s not the final word in the matter, an Ontario-based study has added more weight to arguments in favour of all-day every-day kindergarten in Brandon schools.

The Toronto Star reported yesterday that the longer-term study has found kids in all-day kindergarten do better at early reading skills and math than kids who are at school half days.

It found that senior kindergarten students were ahead in vocabulary, knowledge of the alphabet, phonological/letter sound awareness, reading and, according to the study’s principal investigator, Janette Pelletier, even “produced more complex drawings than control group children and included more details on characters’ faces and bodies.”

Pelletier, of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, has been following students at seven full-day schools in that province. She found that the senior kindergarten students involved in the study were “significantly ahead of the control group of children.”

Full-day, every-day kindergarten has been a hot topic among parents and board trustees within the Brandon School Division. During recent budget deliberations, trustees had reluctantly rejected the expansion of an ongoing pilot project due to funding issues. Nevertheless, several community members had encouraged the board to reconsider putting the item — 7.5 positions for full-day, every-day kindergarten expansion at a cost of $349,000 — back in the budget.

However, the school division is hoping that the results of their own pilot project will convince the provincial government to start funding all-day, every-day kindergarten across the province.

The idea isn’t without its detractors, especially those who argue that such a program simply costs too much to implement. As it stands, school divisions across the province are already fretting over the costs associated with the province’s recent decision to cap class size at 20 kids for kindergarten to Grade 3.

Brandon trustee Kevan Sumner recently told the Winnipeg Free Press that the cap places a burden on schools that have no space left, thanks to massive immigration.

“Our schools are bursting at the seams, even as we try to maintain a class size of 25,” Sumner said.

The BSD’s kindergarten plan has a strong backer — the Manitoba School Boards Association wants Education Minister Nancy Allan to fund full-day daily kindergarten for any division that wants it. The question, however, is one of cost.

Down in Ontario, the results of the Ontario kindergarten study come on the heels of a commitment by Premier Dalton McGuinty and his education minister to keep their full-day kindergarten program, even against the advice of economist Don Drummond who suggested scrapping it, as it will cost that province more than $1.5 billion per year when fully implemented in the fall of 2014.

How the Manitoba government will proceed remains somewhat of a mystery. The NDP government already faces a ballooning provincial debt and more than a billion-dollar spending deficit.

Finding the cash to pay for mandated smaller class sizes — which will require more teachers and classrooms across the province — as well as the BSD’s proposed all-day, every-day kindergarten program, seems to us an insurmountable task.

Unfortunately, we don’t believe this province can afford both. Something’s gotta give. And in our opinion, funding the all-day, every-day kindergarten program seems to be a more efficient use of provincial funds than unnecessarily throwing money at new bricks and mortar.