About 80 per cent of local kids have the skills they need for school, says new data from a provincial report, but almost one in five are struggling to get through kindergarten.
The provincial Early Child Development Mapping Project released its report on St. Albert and Sturgeon County children last month. The St. Albert Sturgeon Early Years Coalition – the multidisciplinary group managing the project in this region – will publicize the report in information sessions later this month.
The project had kindergarten teachers across Alberta evaluate some 52,000 of their students using a standardized survey, said Susan Lynch, a professor at the University of Alberta and head of the project. The surveys were done from 2009 to 2012.
The first three years of a child’s life are critical when it comes to brain development, Lynch said, and lay the foundation for the child’s future. “If the foundation is not well established, then there are problems downstream,” she said, such as difficulty in school and an increased risk of heart disease and substance abuse.
Students were scored based on five developmental areas, including physical health, emotional maturity and communication skills, and compared to the national average. Anyone in the top 75 per cent was “developing appropriately” (i.e. had all the skills needed for kindergarten), while anyone in the bottom 25 was “experiencing difficulty” and deficient in one or more areas.
About 561 Sturgeon County and 1,194 St. Albert students were surveyed as part of the project.
The project found that about 80 per cent of Sturgeon County and 85 per cent of St. Albert kindergarten students were developing appropriately.
That’s well above the provincial average of 73 per cent and the national one of 75, said Susan Evans, spokesperson for the St. Albert Sturgeon Early Years Coalition. “We’re doing better than Alberta on average, and better than Canada on average.”
But the project also shows that about 21 per cent of county kids and 15 per cent of St. Albert ones were not ready for school, Evans continued, in that they were experiencing “great difficulty” in at least one of the five developmental areas. “Twenty to 21 per cent of our kids need that extra support.”
In the regional breakdown of the results for the county (which should be used with caution due to the small number of students in each region), the project found that some 44 per cent of kids in the Gibbons-Redwater region were experiencing great difficulty in one or more areas – more than twice the rate for the county as a whole.
This isn’t a big surprise, said Mary McGregor, an associate superintendent with the Sturgeon School Division – there are a lot of new, young families coming into the Redwater, Gibbons and Bon Accord area, she explains, and not much in the way of support services in the region. “(This) is confirmation for us of where we need to put our resources.”
The project also found that about 19 per cent of St. Albert kids had difficulty with communication skills, notes RenĂ©e Lukie, district preschool co-ordinator with St. Albert Public. “What the (project) results don’t tell us is the why.”
That’s where the community comes in. The St. Albert Sturgeon coalition plans to present these results to the public later this month in order to determine what’s behind them and what resources the community needs to improve them, Lukie said.
Canada consistently ranks near the bottom in global surveys in terms of early childhood development, Lynch said, which reflects the relatively small amount of cash we put into it. “We’ve got this idea that as a community we don’t have a role in raising children,” she said. “It’s kind of every man for himself.”
A 1998 Canadian study found that every public dollar spent on high-quality child-care produced $2 of benefit to children and families, the project’s website notes.
The project is now collecting its second round of surveys, Lynch said, and plans to present its final results by August 2014.
Project results for St. Albert will be presented this April 15 at the St. Albert Public Library at 6 p.m. and at the St. Albert Family Resource Centre the next day at 1 p.m. Presentations are also planned in Morinville and Gibbons on April 16.
Call Evans at 780-939-4321 ext. 206 for details. Project reports are available at www.ecmap.ca.
