The Ontario government has released highlights from a study of the full-day kindergarten program.
It found overall students in full-day kindergarten are better prepared to enter Grade 1 and to be more successful in school, the province said in a release on Monday.
In every area, students improved their readiness for Grade 1 and accelerated their development, the study says.
Comparisons of children with two years of FDK instruction and children with no FDK instruction showed that FDK: reduced risks in social competence development from 10.5 per cent to 5.2 per cent; reduced risks in language and cognitive development from 16.4 per cent to 4.3 per cent; reduced risks in communication skills and general knowledge development from 10.5 per cent to 5.6 per cent.
The study was conducted in partnership with Queen's and McMaster universities from 2010-2012. The purpose of this research was to measure the impact of full-day kindergarten, and to help identify effective practices to improve the delivery of the program moving forward, the province said in a release on Monday.
It included data collection, case studies, phone interviews, online surveys, classroom observation and focus groups were used in schools across the province over the two-year period.
The current quantitative results focus on data from 693 children, 52 per cent girls, 48 per cent boys - from 125 participating schools. It included 258 children enrolled in FDK for two years (junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten), 210 children who took one year of FDK (senior kindergarten only), and 225 children had no exposure to FDK.
It measured student development in five areas including, physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognition, communication skills and general knowledge.
