Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I am going to make a Member's statement on some of the work that we were doing in Committee of the Whole last Tuesday. Last Tuesday, I felt I was unable to communicate clearly enough to be able to get some answers. I am going to talk a bit about what I saw on Tuesday, much to my surprise and shock, the way that the mandatory or compulsory attendance for junior kindergarten and kindergarten works in the schools. My understanding, initially, before Tuesday, was that once a five-year-old, four-year-old student got to go to junior kindergarten and they had enrolled, at the point that they enrolled, it was mandatory for them to attend school on a daily basis like any other student who was enrolled in the school.
My understanding from the Committee of the Whole meeting that we had was that students can come and go as they please, whether they are enrolled or not. If they are enrolled in school and they choose not to go to school, then they don't have to go to school, but the numbers of enrolment mean that there could potentially be games being played where people could enroll a lot of four-year-olds and five-year-olds into the school and just concern themselves with students attending for the first couple of years until the numbers are counted, and then the kids no longer have to attend school. It also sets up a possibility that people are just using junior kindergarten as a childcare drop-off.
I became a bit concerned about that and started to think about all of the possibilities of our education development instrument, how all the time were working on the numbers, and the numbers were increasing, the vulnerabilities were increasing for the junior kindergarten and kindergarten students.
I will have questions for the Minister today, but I guess my understanding was that, if they are in school, then they are in school, but if they don't have to attend, then how are they going to increase the numbers? Maybe we should pick a different school to apply the education development instrument if kindergarten kids don't have to be there and, at any given day, they can wish to stay home. I am going to have some questions for the Minister on that today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.