In February of this year, British Columbia’s education minister Shirley Bond announced that her ministry would investigate the cost and feasibility of offering all-day kindergarten.  At this moment in B.C., all-day kindergarten is only available for aboriginal, ESL and special-needs children. The plan would mean that full day kindergarten would be available to all five-year-olds by September 2009 and they have plans to extend that to four- and three-year-olds by 2010 and 2012 respectively.

The current economic downturn is now threatening that plan (source). The plan would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars, so they are now studying how and when they can best implement these changes. There are lots of advantages and disadvantages when it comes to all-day kindergarten.

Advantages:

Besides the practical advantages like less transportation hassle (no school buses to children from school to daycare), full-day programs provide a relaxed, unhurried school day with more time for a variety of experiences, for screening and assessment opportunities, and for more interaction between adults and students.

Disadvantages:

A lot of people however think half a day is enough. It offers ample time in school and allows more time for the young child to play and interact with adults and other children in less-structured home or child care settings. Half a day provides continuity and systematic experience with less probability of stress. Also, full day kindergarten require additional teaching staff and aides to maintain an acceptable child-adult ratio. Another thing is that all day kindergarten is considered to be too academic, concentrating on basic skills before children are ready. I can also imagine that practically one half-day of an all-day program may become merely child care.

Of course the decision to put a child into a half-day or full-day kindergarten program lies with the parents, and it all depends on the child itself. What do you think is best?

There is a growing trend towards starting kindergarten later, sometimes at the age of 6 or later. Most parents who hold their children back at home, do so because they think their child is not ready for kindergarten. In their opinion, their child will be stronger (socially and emotionally) and smarter if they wait longer.

A recent study examined the academic results of students who started kindergarten later. Of course older children were performing better than younger students at first, but eventually they had similar academic test scores throughout elementary and middle school. So their ‘advantage’ over younger children had worn out by the time they were in grade 8.

As a result, by the time these late kindergarten students have finished their academic paths, they start working a year later. Also, parents have an extra year of childcare costs if they delay entry into kindergarten.

In my opinion, children should attend kindergarten as early as possible. The possitive effect that older classmates give them (setting higher standards, getting help from older students) is too valuable.

I wonder what your opinions are about starting kindergarten early or late!

I was looking for information of teaching jobs on the website of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and found some interesting statistics that I wanted to share with you:

In the USA, of all occupations in the elementary and secondary school category, there are 64,000 preschool teachers, 160,000 kindergarten teachers, 1.4 million elementary school teachers, 640,000 middle school teachers, 1 million secondary school teachers, and roughly 400,000 special education teachers.

Impressive numbers. However, I was more stunned when I noticed the number of management jobs (almost 300,000) and other occupations in this category: There is a grand total of 8.4 million people working in elementary and secondary schools, including financial managers, marketing managers, lawyers, school bus drivers, cooks, dishwashers, librarians etc. So, roughly only two thirds of all the people working in elementary and secondary schools are actually teachers.

Some other interesting statistics are that 80,9% of the elementary and middle school teachers are female, and of all preschool and kindergarten teachers even 97,3% (!) are female.  Where are all the men you wonder