The costs of 'full-day learning'

Charles Pascal, McGuinty's special adviser on early learning, has crafted an ambitious, comprehensive plan that would deliver from a central facility a range of social services, from full-time infant daycare and education, to medical and public health services, nutrition counselling, home visits, playgroups, and family counselling for children from birth until age 12 and their families. These centres would operate for 11 hours a day, throughout the year.

"Full-day learning," as it's being called, has an appealing ring to it. We live in a knowledge economy, after all, so who can object to more learning? In reality, though, imposing a 40+ hour week on nursery and kindergarten students is problematic, given what we know about the effects of institutionalized care for children barely out of toddlerhood.

Advocates of daycare for small children point to improved academic outcomes. This is true, in the sense that some, but by no means all, resource-intensive enrichment programs for preschoolers yield higher levels of literacy in the early years of elementary school. Even the best such programs, though, show no lasting benefits; by the end of Grade 6, differences between alumni of early intervention programs and control groups are statistically insignificant.

In the longer term, full daycare, whether it's called childcare or dressed up as "full-day learning," may even have a detrimental effect on educational outcomes. A British study on the legacy of non-maternal care found that for every year prior to first grade that children were in full-time care outside the home, their odds of completing high school work at the pre-university level dropped by nine per cent.

What is most remarkable about this study is that it compared only siblings raised in the same household; socio-economic factors, maternal education, and family breakdown did not play a role in the discrepancy researchers found.

Spending long days out of the home from an early age has health implications, too. Children in full-time daycare have more ear infections and minor illnesses than their counterparts at home. More troubling, they are at a higher risk for aggression and other behavioural problems, as well as more oppositional relationships with their parents.

If mothers and fathers conclude that, despite these downsides, an extended day of care is the best option for their children, they should of course be free to make that choice. But as our model of early childhood education shifts from parental care in the home to institutionalized care delivered by paid staff, we risk creating a system that makes all other choices less accessible, if not impossible.

Political decisions always come down to the allocation of resources.

If Ontario adopts the recommendations in Pascal's report, it will spend almost $1 billion per year, not including most of the capital costs associated with opening new daycares and heavier use of school infrastructure, or the expense of training the certified workers who will be employed there. Quebec's experiment with highly subsidized full-time daycare showed that projected revenues from greater workforce participation did not materialize, and Pascal's suggestion that childcare be provided without reference to parental employment indicates that this will be the case in Ontario, too.

This means a bigger burden for all Ontario taxpayers, whether or not they'll benefit from the new daycare regime. In fact, parents around the world consistently rate full time, institutional daycare as their last choice for childcare. Families that choose to have a parent at home make a considerable financial sacrifice, foregoing part or all of a salary to do what they believe to be the best thing for their children. "Mission creep" in the school system, as we stretch the school day and year, and put ever younger children into institutional care, increases the tax burden on middle-class and working families -- the very people whose ability to choose between daycare and at-home parenting is on the line. Adopting a model like Ontario's could well make drop-off and pick-up more seamless, but it would come at a great cost, measured not only in dollars for taxpayers but also in outcomes and freedom of choice for children and parents.

Rebecca Walberg is president of the Wakefield Centre for Policy Research.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 30, 2009 A13