To say that the past few years have been eventful is an understatement. There is a “before” and an “after” pandemic. This will have been a catalyst for social and structural issues. Thus, educational childcare services have (finally!) been propelled to the rank of essential service.
Posted at 3:00 p.m.
Essential for other sectors to continue their activities. Essential, because we quickly (re)noted the protective effect of early childhood centers (CPE) for children from difficult backgrounds. Essential for Quebec to recover from this pandemic and be able to start functioning again.
Change in social acceptability
We are witnessing a rare community of spirit in the proposals of the main political parties in Quebec. Four of them want to complete the network of educational childcare services within five years. Three of them have a clear position on the conversion to a fully subsidized installation network, or consider that access to an educational childcare service should be a fundamental right, in the same way as access to education .
Quebeckers are also aware of the importance of the service, and they no longer accept that not all children have a place, let alone a place at $8.70. But not all places are created equal, and soon citizens will have an important choice to make: where do they want their money invested?
The choice of quality
Consider this fact: in addition to the need for these places to be affordable, it is their quality that makes the difference. And that’s good, because the network of child education services is one of the only ones to have a mandatory evaluation provided for this purpose. Verdict?
According to data from the Ministère de la Famille, for the same funding for private subsidized daycare centers (for profit) and CPEs (non-profit), the quality is 30% higher in CPEs.
And 30% is a significant difference in the daily life of our children. The objective of converting non-subsidized private daycares into CPEs is therefore the logical follow-up to the path taken so far.
Since 1997, CPEs have been offering this guarantee of quality, year after year. It is high time to move on to the last stage, and to establish the CPEs globally.