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Excerpt: "A group of diverse research and policy experts in early child development met to discuss the recently released findings on the implementation and impact of Full Day kindergarten in Ontario. As supporters of FDK, participants were interested in developing strategies to address the media backlash that followed the release of the ‘Meta-Perspective’ document and to ensure the program would be evaluated fairly and effectively over time."

On December 3, 2013, the Ontario government introduced the Child Care Modernization Act, to "take steps to strenghthen oversight of the province's unlicensed child care sector while increasing access to licensed child care options for families."

Excerpt: "Across Canada it is a familiar scene, parents lined up in the cold to get their kids into a preferred slot at a preschool. Whether motivated by a desire to give their child a head start for school or the need for care so they can work, the challenge is the same - too many children for too few good spots. But in the Northwest Territories the scene is changing. Publicly funded schools are filling the breach."

Excerpt: "Newfoundland and Labrador will become the newest members of the Full Day Kindergarten club starting in 2016. The province’s March 27, 2014 budget includes a plan for new capital spending to retrofit schools for 5-year-olds and the hiring of 140 additional teachers.

This is a quick look at kindergarten in the rest of Canada."

Excerpt: "Atkinson Centre faculty took aim at the slanted manner applied to reporting on the impact of full-day kindergarten for 4- and 5-year olds in Ontario. The article ignores the significant benefits of full-day kindergarten to zero in on the flat lining of reading, writing and numeracy skills for one group in the study."

Excerpt: "A number of jurisdictions are raising the salaries of Early Childhood Educators this year but all allocate more funding to qualified staff as a way to build a professional workforce. Ontario’s announcement doesn’t appear to include this differential. At $2 an hour over two years, Ontario’s raise is comparable to adjustments in Quebec, PEI and Newfoundland but less than the $6/hour going to trained ECEs in the NWT."

Excerpt: "The bidding for child care in the Ontario election campaign started at $269-million with the Liberals, dropped to $100-million by the NDP and vanished by the time it got to the Tories. Surprisingly advocates don’t ask the NDP leader why she killed the budget to come back with $169-million less than what was initially on the table."

Excerpt: "Can Ontario's universal full-day kindergarten program help to level the playing field? The list of possibilities is long: closing the gap of language experience of kids living in poverty, reaching all vulnerable kids, including those in the middle class, contributing support to families who need child care, and ensuring that care and education are combined in high quality programs that boost overall child development as well as academic skills and economic success. Research has shown that many of these goals can be accomplished by high quality universal early childhood programs."

Excerpt: "For Emis Akbari, a post-doc at OISE’s Atkinson Centre, writing a children’s book was never a career aspiration. Reconnecting with childhood friends Brian and Laura Veloso via Facebook, she learned that their third child Owen, now six, had been born with Hyperplasmic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), a rare and complex congenital heart defect in which the left side of the heart is critically underdeveloped."

Excerpt: "The immediate and long-term benefits of quality early childhood eduacation (ECE) for children and society are well documented. Early childhood educaiton is a job creator in its own right, while supporting parents as they work or upgrade their skills."

Excerpt: "Why is this work so important? First, it pulls back the curtain on which provinces and territories are making progress and how each needs to progress further to seize the social and economic benefits of quality early childhood education for the nation’s children. This recent edition of the “index” idea, released by Mrs. McCain, reveals a good deal of progress by the provinces with much more to do. Despite increased investments by provincial governments, far too many children are still denied access to pre-school with countries as disparate as Mexico and the UK doing far better than Canada. Overall, this kind of accountability reporting is about evidence-based decision making."

The Schools at the Centre study explores the impact of full day kindergarten and extended hours programming on educators, families and early years administrators in three Ontario regions. By exploring the processes and partnerships developed between school boards, regional governments and community organizations the researchers were able to uncover lessons to inform policy and practice. The aim of the study is to strengthen child and family centred services in communities.