Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this motion is not about the value of providing early childhood education to four-year-olds in the Northwest Territories, that is value that we all agree on. Research has shown time and again that investing in the development of preschoolers yields good results for them, not only in terms of school readiness, but in school achievement and in fact in life-long learning.
This motion is about rollout of the program. The rollout of the program, Phase 1, was reviewed independently, and that report was tabled in this House in February. The report included a number of recommendations, and they are not numerous, there are about five of them. The one that I wanted to speak to is accommodating existing programs. Some communities have no choice for early childhood development other than junior kindergarten, and it also turns out that many of those communities that have no choice have the greatest need for it. So it makes sense to have junior kindergarten in those communities.
Some communities, like Yellowknife, have many choices and the implementation of junior kindergarten shouldn't fetter those choices. So I'm talking here about Aboriginal Head Start in Ndilo, about the Montessori School, and about daycares, all very different kinds of programs and all with different educational goals and attainments. It's worth noting of course that Aboriginal Head Start both, here and in Yellowknife and in the other seven communities where it's offered as a free program. Other programs cost money. I recognize that some parents struggle to pay that money, but they make the choice because they are committed to the philosophy of the program that's being offered.
So what I'm trying to point to here, Mr. Speaker, is that there is a different context in each community for the education and development of four-year-olds, different needs for oversight, staffing, costs and curriculum. So for that reason, I really believe that there needs to be a nuanced approach to the introduction of junior kindergarten that takes into account the different contexts in different communities, whether they have Aboriginal Head Start which, as I say, exists in eight communities, or whether they have Montessori, which is unique to Yellowknife.
I know that the department has introduced some new rates for daycares, and certainly that is a very welcome development. It's important to note that it doesn't cover the differences between programs that are currently geared to zero to three-year-olds and programs that are geared for three to five-year-olds. So these are two different kinds of programs with different requirements for staffing, for equipment, for curriculum and so on.
It's also worth noting, and this is important in the context of junior kindergarten, that these rates are only paid when children attend. It's not like school where the schools are funded whether the children attend or not. Daycare and early childhood development programs, the subsidies are only paid when the children attend.
So in the case of Aboriginal Head Start, for example, if the children stop attending Aboriginal Head Start, which is a free program, and they start attending junior kindergarten, which is a free program, then certainly junior kindergarten will be disadvantaged because they will not receive the subsidy because the children aren't attending.
There are issues as well which my colleague, Mr. Blake, has spoken about very eloquently about how junior kindergarten is provided by teachers and other programs such as Aboriginal Head Start and daycare are provided by early childhood education workers, and they generally tend to be workers from the community who have achieved their degree or diploma in this area and are qualified to work with children at this age on their development issues, but it's important to know they're not teachers. So, as a result, what I can foresee, is what my colleague has spoken about is that early childhood workers will be out of work because their programs will be taken over by teachers. This removes the program from the community from its cultural context, from its parental oversight and so on.
School is definitely a completely different proposition in terms of the way it's delivered than early childhood development is.
I want to talk a little bit about implementation. The government told us: first, that the program would go into all 49 schools; and, second, that it would be introduced in September of 2017, but they haven't yet produced the implementation plan and a budget for what it will cost. So I feel that the government has put the cart before the horse, they have limited the options for tailoring the implementation of this program by saying already where and when it will be introduced.
So coming up with a plan that is nuanced to the individual needs of the communities and the needs of children who need improvement on the early development instrument, those need to be taken into account, and there should be a real focus on assessing the need for school readiness and meeting that where it is demonstrated to exist.
The greatest fear, I guess, is that what this junior kindergarten program will do is that while opening options to some parents, it will limit options for others. I don't see that as a good trade-off. I think that there should be a way to accommodate both kinds of programs in our communities. Those are my comments, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.