Pre-primary pilot aimed at working parents fills less than half available spaces

A pilot program launched in January to try to take the pressure off parents unable to drop off or pick up their children from their pre-primary programs is only half full.

When Education Minister Zach Churchill announced the before-and-after-school program last November in response to concerns from working parents, he hoped as many as 230 children would take part.

On Tuesday the official in charge of the program, Denise Stone, told a legislature committee only 103 children are currently enrolled. She also said two of the 10 sites originally chosen to participate dropped out before the program started.

"They weren't able to secure the right conditions to roll out the pilot," said Stone, acting executive director of early childhood development.

The Bedford Highway pre-primary site, run by the French language school board Conseil Scolaire Acadien Provincial​, and Harbourside Elementary School in Sydney both backed out of their initial commitment to join the program.

Stone told members of the human resources committee the department worked with three schools in the Cape Breton region to try to find a suitable site, but was unsuccessful.

"They just felt, at the time, that they weren't able to commit completely to the pilot," she said.

Parents had plans

Speaking to the CBC after the meeting, Stone said parents who may have needed the service already had child care lined up for the new year.

The pilot program runs from January to June. There is no commitment to run it beyond this school year.

"What we discovered was that a majority of parents had already had plans and accommodations made for their children," she said.

PC MLA Alana Paon, who represents Cape Breton-Richmond, said it appears the government scrambled to appease parents frustrated that pre-primary hours did not match their work schedules or conflicted with classroom hours for older siblings.

"The program has been rushed," said Paon.

"If you're announcing a program in November and your asking ECEs [early childhood educators] to go and take training in December," she said. "It's not a lot of time to get yourself organized and make certain that you have the best results possible.

"It's just pushing through programs without a lot of thought."

A success?

Stone said the program was responding to what parents wanted, and "we need to learn about how to roll out a before-and-after program for pre-primary."

Although the schools that dropped out are not participating in the program, Stone said they had agreed to offer feedback to Mount Saint Vincent University researchers who will evaluate it.

Asked if she thought the pilot program was a success, Stone said: "I would see the information that we're getting to be useful in terms of planning forward for a before-and-after program."