Mr. Speaker, the first five years of a child’s life are critical to creating a foundation for their healthy physical, emotional, social and cognitive development. Supporting child-care programs is one of the priorities of this Legislative Assembly. The Departments of Education, Culture and Employment and Health and Social Services worked in partnership and developed the Early Childhood Development Action Plan. It will provide accessible quality early childhood and parental programs and services for all Northwest Territories families.
We will implement about half of the actions in close collaboration with our partners in Health and Social Services. The others are within our own Department’s mandate and I would like to focus on some of those today.
Mr. Speaker, the phased introduction of Junior Kindergarten in all of our schools marks a significant milestone in creating access to free, quality early childhood education for four-year-old children. It will provide young children with a hands-on play-based program to support their development and learning.
The Department will introduce this optional, full-day Junior Kindergarten program in September 2014. This program is of no cost to parents, will be offered in our schools as part of the K-12 education system, and will roll out over 3 years. The first wave will be where the need is greatest – in the NWT’s 29 small communities.
Mr. Speaker, we are revamping our Aboriginal Language Nests program to make sure it aligns with the needs of our communities. These programs are delivered through our licensed daycare centres and expose children to an Aboriginal language at an early age. Research shows that the best way for a young child to learn any language is to be in a rich language environment. It is therefore essential that all licensed early childhood programs reflect the language and cultural backgrounds of the children they serve.
Just like Junior Kindergarten, licensed daycare centres are important delivery agents of quality early childhood programs and services. Our job as government is to make sure they have the support and resources they need to deliver high-quality programs in safe environments. That is why we have implemented the NWT Child Day Care Standards Regulations to set consistent standards across the territory for all licensed daycares. We will also be working with our licensed early childhood programs to eliminate red tape, so they can focus on programming and development, rather than paperwork.
One of the most critical success factors of any daycare is having qualified people in whose care we entrust our children. To acknowledge that very fact, we plan to introduce a wage subsidy for early childcare practitioners in our licensed daycares to address the issue of comparatively low wages of that critical profession. As of April 1st, we intend to institute a tiered wage top-up plan for all current practitioners. We are also putting in place a credentialing system, scholarships, and incentives for early childhood development professional training and certifications.
Mr. Speaker, all of our early childhood investments are linked and we are building to a critical mass. This is work no one can do alone and with our partners, we are confident that we have the building blocks in place to provide a foundation for accessible high quality programs and services for healthy successful children.
Masi, Mr. Speaker.