What’s Holding Back School-Based Child Care? Why We’re Requesting Data from Ontario’s School Boards

In Ontario, more than half of licensed child care centres are located in publicly funded schools. Despite this, the majority of before-and-after school programs (BASPs) and preschool child care are operated by not-for-profit third-party providers, rather than by school boards themselves.

While schools offer a logical setting for early learning and care, the current approach often falls short. Families face limited access. Program quality varies. Staffing challenges persist, particularly because of split-shift roles in BASPs, which are difficult to fill and retain.

As an organization committed to strengthening the early years system in Ontario, B2C2 continues to advocate for a more integrated approach to school-based child care. This includes the seamless day model, where school boards directly operate before-, during-, and after-school care using a consistent staff team. Research shows that this model improves workforce stability, raises care quality, and better serves families across socio-economic groups.

To understand what’s preventing the broader implementation of seamless care models, B2C2 has submitted Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to all 72 school boards in Ontario.

What We’re Asking For

Our FOI requests seek clarity on four key areas:

• How demand is determined. We have asked boards to share their 2025 criteria for assessing the need for before-and-after school programs, including any surveys they have conducted with families.
• How space is allocated. We want to understand whether BASP programs operate in shared classroom space or have access to dedicated rooms.
• What has changed under the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program (CWELCC)? We’ve asked how many third-party child care operators have stopped offering services within the board and what steps, if any, the board has taken to continue providing those programs.
• What barriers exist for expansion? Finally, we have requested information on how many schools within each board have space available for 0–4 age group programming and what obstacles prevent that space from being used for child care..

Why This Matters

School-based child care has the potential to increase access, stability, and quality for families across Ontario. But many child care programs report challenges, including limited space, zoning hurdles, and difficulty attracting qualified staff for short or split shifts.

Understanding how each school board currently approaches child care planning is essential to identifying policy gaps and building stronger, more equitable early years systems. The data we’ve requested will help highlight where opportunities exist—and where greater collaboration and investment are needed.

This FOI is part of our larger effort to ensure that early learning and care is accessible, high-quality, and publicly accountable in every community across Ontario.