Gord Cleveland at childcarepolicy.net writes about a recent Statistics Canada report in a recent article. The report, analyzed by Leanne Findlay and Thomas Charters, delves into the state of Canada’s child care workforce for children aged 0-5, using data from the 2021-22 Canadian Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services.
In the article, Cleveland notes that the study encompasses nearly 12,000 centers, and then proceeds to outline various statistics about the workforce in those centres. He says that the Stats Can report highlights significant disparities in staff qualifications, and Cleveland gives the example that while 83% of centers have supervisors with an Early Childhood Education (ECE) credential, “50% of centres have at least one staff member with no ECE training, and in those centres on average there are 3.7 staff members with no training.”
Cleveland’s article goes on to outline the report’s findings of low wages across the sector, the provision of benefits in different types of centre, and the high level of job vacancies (“No wonder expansion of services has been slow and difficult”).
Noting the lack of detail in some responses, Cleveland calls for a workforce survey of individual supervisors, ECEs and other staff. Such a survey would need to be large enough to provide a breakdown by province but would then allow Canadians to get a full picture of the “qualifications, remuneration, and recruitment and retention issues” in the child care workforce.