Activists express concern after Winnipeg School Division cancels full-day kindergarten pilot program

Manitoba's largest school division will no longer offer full-day kindergarten and that worries local early-childhood activists. 

Eleven schools in the Winnipeg School Division — Norquay, John M. King, Strathcona, Wellington, Harrow, Fort Rouge, Earl Grey, Mulvey, Shaughnessy Park, Lord Selkirk and William Whyte — are involved in what has been nearly an eight-year-long pilot program.

That program will end in June 2022, and Sheri-Lynn Skwarchuk, an education professor at the University of Winnipeg, is worried about children who are less fortunate.

"The research that I've been involved with shows that children who are underrepresented in terms of socio-economic backgrounds certainly have more ground to catch up on average compared to say other kids who are in more affluent families," Skwarchuk said on CBC Radio's Up To Speed Wednesday.

The intention of the pilot, which started in 2013 with four schools and later expanded to 11, was to study whether students would benefit from a longer school day. The study used report card data, provincial English and math skills evaluations, school attendance data and parent surveys, among other tools, to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. 

The division released a report on its findings of the program Wednesday.

Early in the study, results suggested full-day kindergarten students were benefiting from more time in the classroom. Specifically, they were more prepared for a full day in school and were more engaged in the classroom, said Celia Caetano-Gomes, the division's superintendent of education.

However, before the end of Grade 2, the half-day kindergarten students had achieved the early gains of full-day kindergarten students, and there were no impacts on academic performance in later years and no sustained growth improvements, she said.

Skwarchuk knows challenges arise for kids who start to fall behind academically at an early age. 

"In certain regions and in other studies that have been conducted, there's been good evidence that these children show gains into Grade 2 and as far up as into Grade 5," she said.

Ontario has a full-day early learning kindergarten program that provides two full years of full-day schooling before Grade 1, beginning the year a child turns four years old. 

Skwarchuk said this innovative approach allows children to work with teachers, as well as early-childhood educators.

"You're kind of getting the best of both worlds. You're getting the teacher who has the extracurricular expertise, but also the early-childhood educator who has all the developmental knowledge of how children grow over these important early years," she said.

The fact that socio-economic factors and data were not considered in making the decision to halt the program bothers Kate Kehler, executive director of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg.