Daycare services help prepare Allophone children before kindergarten: new Quebec study

Allophone children in daycare are better prepared when they enter kindergarten, shows a new Quebec study that was shared for the first time with The Canadian Press.

According to the authors, Allophone children often experience learning and communication difficulties in kindergarten, which could have negative repercussions on their academic progress.

Preschool education services would contribute significantly to reducing the gap between children whose first language is French and those where French is their second or third language. 

“We’re talking about families who may not speak French, or at least who choose not to speak French,” explained study author, Professor Sylvana Côté from the Université de Montréal School. “We see that these children are less well prepared to start school than if they had attended a preschool daycare.”

According to Côté, “being exposed to other children and to a team of educators better prepares you for school compared to growing up in a home where neither French nor English are spoken.”

Using data from the Quebec Survey on Child Development in Kindergarten from the Institut de la Statistique du Québec (ISQ), Côté and her colleagues reached out around 81,000 children enrolled in kindergarten who were, on average, six years old, between February and May 2022.

According to the survey, 6.1 per cent of kindergarten children in Quebec came from allophone families. The researchers found that nearly 14 per cent of these children stayed at home before starting school, compared to only six per cent of children whose first language was French ― a gap that could be attributed to less familiarity with the network or cultural preferences “that must be respected,” said Côté.

The results, they say, “are clear”: allophone children who attended daycare had better cognitive development, in addition to having better social and emotional skills. Their communication skills were also better because they had a better grasp of general knowledge.

“Preschool daycare services promote social diversity and social integration for all children,” said Côté. “That means that (children) who might not have the basics that allow them to meet school expectations acquire them if they go to a preschool education service.”

Smaller benefits were seen in allophone children who had attended preschool at age four.

Different skills

According to researchers, it doesn’t mean that children who grow up in allophone families have poorer communication skills or less general knowledge, “but they have general knowledge that is different from what we expect them to have at school,” said Côté.

“Their communication skills are not the same because they come into a context where it’s not the language they grew up in for the first five years of their life, so it just makes sense,” she added.

Allophone children offer other children the opportunity to experience multiculturalism and acquire “much more varied” general knowledge, noted Côté.

“If we make friends from different cultures at two or three years old, we have much less reluctance towards these cultures when we are older,” she said. “There are much fewer challenges in developing the social fabric at these ages than if we wait until later.”

So, if we work with these children, “it allows them not only to be better prepared for school, but also, possibly, to enrich others with knowledge that is different from what we would have if they were not there,” said the researcher.

Côté said she believes that even if bilingualism is excellent for the brain, it “is essential to ensure that children whose first language is not French are not penalized by the scarcity of places in preschool education services in centres,” to avoid falling into a vicious circle where the allophone child falls behind and never stops catching up.

“This suggests that in our policies for welcoming foreigners, we have an important lever here to facilitate the reception of these children when they arrive at school because school readiness is a very important determinant for the rest of their school trajectory,” said Côté. “It is the best way to predict if a child will drop out of school. So, we have to start off on the right foot.”

She added that “we can have more inclusive policies that respect different cultures and promote access and sharing of this multiculturalism.”

“In early childhood, so at one or two years old, parents can have cultural preferences,” concluded Côté. “But at three, four or five years old, the village that raises the child is in preschool education services because children need stimulation and social interactions.”

The researchers weighted the results to consider the financial situation of families. The study demonstrates the impact of preschool education services beyond economic status, noted Côté.

The findings of this study were published by the prestigious medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews