School daycare services are suffering and the community no longer knows what string to pull to ring the alarm bell.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
Much has been made, in this new school year, of the shortage of teachers, but the shortage affecting educators in school daycare is just as serious. According to an internal survey, two weeks before the start of the school year, some 5,000 educators were missing to fill all the positions. This represents a quarter of the workforce!
To avoid service disruptions, schools have limited options. Either they mobilize other members of the school staff, or they massively hire unqualified people, or else they exceed the ratio of one educator for 20 students provided for in the regulations. In fact, they often have to do a bit of all of these things at once.
The net result is the erosion of the educational quality of school daycare services.
What we find difficult to understand is the relative indifference of the Ministry of Education and, to a certain extent, of the general public, to the difficulties of school daycare. As if this service was not perceived as important. However, more than 60% of elementary students attend daycare and often spend as many hours there as they do in class.
A little pedagogy is needed, then, to try to replace perceptions.
First of all, school childcare services have long been – should no longer be – just a “parking lot for children”. These are educational services that pursue the overall development of students and they are part of their living environment. It’s written in black and white in the regulations.
In school daycare, learning happens through play, but it’s learning nonetheless. Learn to socialize. Learn to develop physical skills. Learn to develop language skills.
Childcare also means learning to experience success. For students who have difficulty in class, at daycare, they suddenly find themselves on an equal footing with the others. This can save many from dropping out.
Finally, the daycare service is also the only service that will follow the student throughout his or her career, from kindergarten to sixth grade. The educators are significant adults for the child. This close relationship means that it is often at the daycare that we identify a problematic situation in a child, a behavior that changes, etc. Students will also often find it easier to confide in their educator.
Childcare is an important safety net.
In the past, children got together to play after school, under the benevolent gaze of mothers who stayed at home. It was the norm. Today, the norm is two parents who work outside.
Children who do not attend daycare very often find themselves at home with only a screen for company.
For years, we have deplored the lack of vision for school daycare. The Ministry of Education must do more! It must formally recognize that school daycare services are important services for the overall development of the child. It must commit to the quality of services by adopting a real frame of reference equipped with monitoring measures and quality indicators. It must take advantage of the unique expertise of educators and offer them decent working hours.
The school system is cracking everywhere. Will the next government have the courage to really reflect on its future, or will it be satisfied, as too often in the past, with a patching operation?
To ignore these reflections is to condemn oneself to relive the same thing year after year.