It’s an investment opportunity like no other. A chance to secure a brighter economic future by investing in tomorrow’s community leaders, today.
It’s called Early Childhood Development (ECD), and rather than measuring the return on investment in dollars and cents, Charlie Coffey, a director with the Council for Early Child Development, calls it a return on society.
At a Wednesday breakfast meeting at Best Western Vernon Lodge, Coffey, a retired executive for government affairs and business development for RBC, spoke to local community leaders about the importance of investing in ECD.
The first six years of a child’s development are crucial for lifelong learning, health and behaviour. More specifically, these formative years are where children develop cognition, language, motor skills, adaptive skills and social-emotional functioning.
Using recent research, Coffey explained the potential benefits of supporting ECD, and the pitfalls of choosing to ignore it. Citing a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, he explained how a $1 investment in high-quality early childhood learning can yield a $17 return down the road.
“If we don’t get it right in the early years, there’s a huge cost later on… incarceration, dropouts, special education, intervention programs, those sorts of things,” said Coffey, who also spoke in Salmon Arm on his Okanagan visit.
“If you want an idea of what your economy will look like in 15 years, take a look at what you’re investing in ECD today.”
An advocate in this field for more than 15 years, Coffey says Canada has dropped the ball in its support of early child development programs.
In a review of 14 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, Canada, investing just 0.25 per cent of its GDP, ranked last in terms of spending on early childhood education and care. By comparison, Denmark topped the chart at 2 per cent, eight times more than Canada.
In UNICEF’s Report Card on early child education and care in the world’s 25 affluent most nations, Canada was last again.
“When I read that, I was a bit angry. Why are we allowing this to happen?” asked Coffey. “There should be more significant change than what we are seeing in this province and country.”
On a provincial level, things aren’t much better. Research conducted by the University of British Columbia’s Human Early Learning Partnership shows that 29 per cent of children entering kindergarten don’t meet the developmental benchmarks needed to thrive in the classroom.
The study also indicates children coming from low economic backgrounds are most at risk, but the majority of vulnerable children in B.C. come from middle-class backgrounds.
To counteract this, the B.C. government is implementing its 15 by 15 policy, which aims to ensure 85 percent of all children entering kindergarten in 2015 will be ready to learn.
Coffey says the solution isn’t all that difficult. It’s just a matter of getting people on the same page.
“This is not complex. (We need) to show support for the people who are dealing with the community’s most precious resource, the children… getting different people at the same table.
“It might be uncomfortable for an ECD educator to meet with the chamber of commerce people. If you get the right environment, you can get the community focus together and talk about developing a vision.”
Lynne Reside, coordinator of the North Okanagan Early Childhood Development Coalition, says her organization is an ideal platform to get community leaders together. The range of attendees at Coffey’s speech was proof of that, as representatives from the school district, Interior Health, childcare agencies, the Greater Vernon Chamber of Commerce and the City of Vernon were all there.
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