Province looks for most effective preschool practices

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This article was published 07/04/2011 (5305 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MANITOBA Education and Literacy is taking a hard look at boosting child learning long before kids land in the school system.

On Wednesday, the province announced the creation of an Early Childhood Unit to research the best education practices around the world for preschoolers.

The move comes at a time when the province is deciding how best to spend scarce dollars on early education. Among the ideas swirling around are more broadly based nursery school programs (now offered only in the Winnipeg School Division and paid for by local taxpayers) and all-day kindergarten (which comes with an $80-million price tag).

Many feel the best financial bang for the education dollar would be to spend money on programs that allow kids to hit kindergarten running.

On Wednesday, the province, school board officials and educators emphasized that thinking at a news conference in the “family centre” at Victor Mager School, a K-8 school in St. Vital.

While reporters and television camera operators gathered, kids barely out of diapers sat at tables playing — oblivious to the journalistic activity around them — with parents close by. Educators call it learning — and experts and politicians are saying we need more of it.

The Victor Mager family room is a place where parents can drop in with kids as young as infants to play, socialize — and learn. There are dozens of such rooms in schools around the province, and they may become more prevalent in the future.

“We all know that the best thing for a young person is to have a really good start in life and that’s why early childhood education is so important,” Education Minister Nancy Allan told reporters above the din on Wednesday.

The province is taking small steps to help kids make what Allan calls a “seamless” transition to kindergarten.

Through the Manitoba Healthy Living department, it is funding (along with school divisions) family rooms for tots at schools like Victor Mager. The new Early Childhood Unit will consist of less than half a dozen staff and be funded under existing budgets. It will advise government on how best to spend early childhood education dollars.

The government also announced Wednesday it would provide $300,000 in new money to school divisions to work with communities on new early childhood programming. Some of the funds will be targeted at communities where kids entering kindergarten are less prepared than they should be.

School trustees and superintendents say more needs to be done.

Bryan O’Leary, superintendent of the Seven Oaks School Division, said the benefits to kids of family centres, for instance, “persist right into middle school.” There is no charge to use such centres, but a parent must accompany their child.

Antonella Greco, who brought her two-year-old daughter Serafina to the family room at Victor Mager School Wednesday, said the drop-in program has been great for her daughter’s social and educational development.

“I think it’s an excellent place. My daughter really enjoys it,” she said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca