Research Project Assignment Education Essay Low Annual Income of Early Childhood Educators in Ontario

Low Annual Income of Early Childhood Educators in Ontario
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Low Annual Income of Early Childhood Educators in Ontario
Introduction
Work conditions within the early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings such as wages, working hours, and staff-child ratios are structural indicators that significantly affect educators to perform well in their workplaces and experience greater job satisfaction. It is often a challenge to attract, train, and retain qualified ECEC staff and pleasant work conditions are known to be strong incentives for qualified educators to enter the profession. Studies indicate that the ability of educators to attend to the children’s needs is affected not only by their education and training levels but also by factors such as annual income and other work benefits (Darling-Hammond, et al., 2019). For instance, low wages can affect educator-child interaction and are associated with high rates of turnovers, which as a result impact child development. The frequent changing of staff within a group of children makes it difficult to form a solid staff and children relationship. Social policies that address the issue of low pay for early childhood educators are necessary to improve the quality of education in Ontario. This paper describes social policies such as the Ontario’s Renewed Early Years and Child Care Policy Framework (2017) by identifying the problem it is intended to address, how it has changed over time, and its latest updates in terms of strengths and weaknesses.
While ECEC has since history been a common issue, many states today are moving towards a more coherent approach to the system. However, Canada continues to maintain a divided perspective about ECEC and upon reviewing the country’s ECEC in 2004, the organization for cooperation and economic development (OECD) proposed that greater integration of childcare and kindergarten would result in real advantages (Friendly, 2008). In 2007, Canada’s largest province, Ontario, began developing integrating “full-day early learning” for children aged between four and five years old. The initial stages of this implementation saw several important challenges that emerged. These challenges included the merging of the public kindergarten system with market-driven children support, funding of the new program, maintaining user-pay childcare stability as the 4-5-year-olds move to the new system, determining staffing models and managing the phase-in (Friendly et al., 2008). As of 2009, Canada’s ECEC system was faring poorly based on international standards. (Friendly et al., 2008). The provincial government in Ontario introduced the Ontario’s Renewed Early Years and Child Care Policy in 2017 with a vision to have families and children access high quality, affordable, and inclusive childcare and early years education programs (Ontario.ca, 2019). However, the policy came into effect on August 31st, 2015 to replace the Day Nurseries Act (DNA) and establish new rules that govern child care in Ontario. Mahon (2015) associates this laggardness status to the liberal character of its regime's social policy and the state's federal structure. According to Akbari and McCuaig (2017), the feder...