Percentage of early childhood educators in Ontario child care declining, despite goal

The percentage of staff in Ontario child-care centres who are registered early childhood educators has been declining over the past few years, moving the province further away from one of its goals in the national $10-a-day system.A recently published Ministry of Education report shows that while there has been a net increase in the total number of RECEs in Ontario child-care programs, there has been a larger increase in the number of non-ECE staff in daycares.In 2022, when Ontario signed on to the national program aimed at lowering fees for parents and expanding availability of care, 58.9 per cent of full-time staff in child-care programs were RECEs – not far off the 60 per cent goal that Ontario agreed to in its deal with the federal government.