The Conversation, April 29, 2019
Excerpt: "Recent investment in universal early childhood education in Nova Scotia is helping to shape a different future for the province’s youngest generation and their families.
Elementary school in Nova Scotia has traditionally started with what’s termed Grade Primary, when children are five years old. But now the province is moving into year three of rolling out a universal full-day, no-fee, early childhood education called the pre-primary program, similar to what is currently offered in both Ontario and the Northwest Territories as play-based junior kindergarten. Starting in the fall of 2019, 201 Nova Scotia schools will offer the pre-primary program, and by 2020 the province plans to offer it in every school community.
Investments in early childhood are necessary to address the inequities documented in our communities in Nova Scotia. We have the highest rate of child poverty — more than one in five children live in poverty — and we are the only province where these rates have increased over the past two years."
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