Poster #76 - Early Childhood Education and Care Services and School Readiness gap in a Canadian Province-Wide Sample

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Background. Socially disadvantaged children are more susceptible to enter school with lower school readiness than their peers. These disparities tend to maintain and widen over time, putting these children at risk of school dropouts and lower degree achievement. In Canada, early childhood education and care services are largely publicly funded and may serve as a population intervention when promoting educational equity. The objective of the study was to investigate whether early childhood education and care services may reduce school readiness inequalities at the population level.

Methods. We used data from the Québec Survey of Child Development in Kindergarten, a province-wide sample of all children who attended public Grade 1 classes during the 2016-2017 school year in Québec (n=83,335). Teachers assessed children’s school readiness using the Early Development Instrument (©Mc Master University, Ontario). Teachers also reported children’s early childhood education and care arrangement during the previous year: parental care, childcare, pre-Kindergarten, or childcare + pre-Kindergarten. We used the socio-economic environment of the school, calculated by the Ministry of Education, to categorize children from disadvantaged, median, and advantaged social backgrounds. Linear regressions compared children from socially disadvantaged and advantaged backgrounds to those from median backgrounds, after controlling for early childhood education and care arrangement social selection bias.

Results. Of participants (n=77,130), 48.88% were girls with a mean age of 5.99 (±0.31) years.
Children from disadvantaged, median, and advantaged backgrounds presented school readiness mean scores of 40.96 (±7.10), 41.58 (±6.86), and 42.08 (±6.49), respectively. When compared with children from median backgrounds, children from disadvantaged backgrounds presented higher school readiness when exposed to childcare services (ß=0.49 [95%CI: 0.15, 0.83]) and when exposed to childcare + pre-Kindergarten services (ß=0.36 [95%CI: 0.05, 0.67]). When compared with children from disadvantaged backgrounds, children from advantaged backgrounds did not present statistically higher school readiness when exposed to childcare services (ß=0.19 [95%CI: -0.13, 0.52]) or childcare + pre-Kindergarten services (ß=-0.05 [95%CI: -0.42, 0.33]). Pre-Kindergarten only was not associated with better school readiness, neither among disadvantaged nor advantaged children when compared with children from median backgrounds.

Conclusions. Early childhood education and care services were associated with higher school readiness among disadvantaged children, suggesting that they may contribute to reduce inequalities. Future research should take into account the quality of these services when investigating their influence on school readiness and later school achievement.

Authors

• Ophélie Collet, Université de Montréal (UdeM)
  Presenting Author

• Pascale Domond, Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center

• Sylvana M Côté, Université de Montréal (UdeM)