A third of Quebec’s childcare services (29%) do not meet the quality standards of the Ministry of Families, and it carries out “insufficient” and “ineffective” follow-ups in delinquent facilities, notes the Auditor General ( VG) of Quebec in its annual report, tabled Thursday in the National Assembly.
Educational quality assessment failure rates have skyrocketed in recent years. They reached 59% in 2022-2023 in unsubsidized private daycares and 57% in subsidized ones. The failure rate also increased from 8% in 2019-2020 to 21% in 2022-2023 in Early Childhood Centers (CPE).
In addition, 26% of CPEs having carried out lead tests at the request of the ministry detected this metal in their water. There have been past news reports of lead levels so high that they posed risks to children’s cognitive development. In private daycares, the rates are lower: 20% and 7% in subsidized and unsubsidized settings, respectively. The participation rates in lead tests, however, vary: from 90% in daycare centers to 81% in subsidized daycares and 75% in unsubsidized ones.
Here, as in the case of evaluations of the educational quality of childcare services, the Ministry of the Family carries out minimal monitoring. It does not require, for example, that a lead test be carried out before a permit is issued, nor does it check whether the lead-reducing filters for faucets — the purchase of which it finances — are indeed and properly installed during its inspections.
The third party in failure
As for the failure rate of educational quality assessments, the ministry expected it to increase to 18% between 2019 and 2023. The cumulative failure rate was instead 29% between 2019 and 2022, and by 41% in 2022-2023, notes the VG.
The VG emphasizes that “the reduction in the ratio of qualified educational personnel is one of the factors which could have contributed to the decline in educational quality”. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Quebec lowered its requirements for qualified personnel in childcare services. In 2023, it chose to maintain a ratio of one qualified educator to two working with children until 2027.
However, “educational childcare services with a lower ratio of qualified educational staff fail the evaluation more than those with a higher ratio,” recalls the VG. The government also reduced in 2021 the criteria leading to obtaining the status of qualified educator, by eliminating, among other things, the requirement to hold a college diploma in childhood education.
Ineffective follow-ups
The VG describes the monitoring carried out by the Ministry of Family as “insufficient” and “ineffective”. Its report reveals that the ministry “did not carry out any intervention in the case of 13 of the 34 situations for which it had received an alert”, sent when the educational quality of a childcare service is considered “concerning”. In 31 of these 34 cases, he also did not receive, “despite the seriousness of the situations reported,” the action plan that the ministry may require from a daycare service.
When the ministry did carry out follow-ups, these were “limited” and constituted “in almost half of the cases” a single communication, “often by telephone […], several months after the evaluation. The VG describes the monitoring carried out by the ministry as “insufficient”. Especially since these checks are mandatory by law, she recalls.
In general, since June 2022, the ministry has required all childcare services that have failed the educational quality assessment to submit an action plan. Between June and November 2022, 64 of these plans were required. Only 40 were sent. The ministry also realized, following requests from the VG, that one of its regional directorates “had not required any action plan”, although 16 of its childcare services had failed the evaluation. in 2022.
In the family environment, the ministry “has not started to carry out the evaluation of educational quality”. Nor has he “planned when it will begin”. The last assessment of this type dates back to 2003. Unrecognized family environments will be illegal from 1er September 2026.
Little follow-up on complaints
The VG also reports that the Ministry of Family received more than 1,100 complaints on more than 2,000 different reasons in 2022-2023. “However, the classification of complaints according to their priority level is not based on formal guidelines,” notes his report. In half of the cases of complaints for “inappropriate” attitudes or practices, the ministry contented itself with a “reminder of good practices”, “without verification of the allegations”.
The ministry has, moreover, “established no formal criteria to determine whether a complaint is priority or urgent”. Nor does he intend to establish such a classification. Result: between 2018-2019 and 2022-2023, “the number of priority complaints fell from 206 to 6”, noted the VG. “
As for complaints classified as urgent in the computer system, they also decreased during this period from 10 to 0,” it is written in the report.