A project focusing on how well Alberta's young children are developing emotionally, intellectually, socially and physically has found that 34 per cent of kindergarten-age children in the western part of Red Deer County are struggling with language and thinking skills.
The Early Childhood Development Mapping Initiative is an Alberta Education-led project where researchers are collecting information on how kindergarten children are developing in five areas including physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, communication skills and general knowledge and language and thinking skills.
Between 2009 and 2012, kindergarten teachers across the western part of Red Deer County, which includes communities such as Bowden and Penhold, completed a questionnaire— referred to as the Early Development Instrument, which was created by the Offord Centre for Child Studies at Ontario's McMaster University— on how their students were doing in the five areas.
The results of the questionnaires are combined with information on socio-economic conditions and community resources in each of the geographic regions being looked at across Alberta with the aim of helping parents, teachers and governments understand how children are faring in and out of the classroom.
Such information could then be used to create strategies meant to improve a child's development.
In the western part of Red Deer County, 150 questionnaires completed by teachers in the Chinook's Edge School Division and Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools were analyzed and the results were broken down into the percentage of children developing appropriately, the percentage experiencing difficulty and the percentage experiencing great difficulty.
According to a report on the project presented to Bowden council at its April 8 meeting, the survey information indicated that 15.33 per cent of kindergarten children in the county are experiencing difficulty in language and thinking skills, meaning they are experiencing some delays in a number of those skills.
And 18.67 per cent of kindergarten children are experiencing great difficulty, the report states, meaning they are experiencing “significant delays” in the development of language and thinking skills.
The 66 per cent of children developing “appropriately” are able to “demonstrate most or all” of the language and thinking skills educators and researchers expect them to show by the time they reach kindergarten.
The best results for the western part of Red Deer County children in the project were in the area of physical health and well-being, with 84 per cent of children developing appropriately, 6.67 per cent experiencing difficulty and 9.33 per cent experiencing great difficulty.
In the area of communications skills and general knowledge, which measures how well children communicate their needs and wants in appropriate ways and possess knowledge about the outside world, 78.67 per cent of children in the study area are developing appropriately.
The report states more than 21 per cent are experiencing some form of difficulty in this area.
More than 75 per cent of children are doing well in social competence, which measures a child's sociability, curiosity and respect, while nearly 25 per cent are struggling with these skills.
County children had the second highest level of difficulty behind language and thinking skills in the area of emotional maturity with 16.67 per cent experiencing difficulty, 10.67 per cent experiencing great difficulty and 72.67 per cent developing appropriately.
When the results were broken down for the west and east parts of the county, students in the western part of the region fared better in all areas of the study except social competence.
Overall, 26 per cent of kindergarten children in the western part of Red Deer County are experiencing great difficulty in one or more areas, a number below the provincial percentage of 26.96 but above the Canadian percentage of 25.4 per cent.
Broken down between the west and east parts of the county, the percentage of kindergarten children experiencing great difficulty in one or more of the study areas was higher in the east at 29.41 per cent, compared to 18.75 per cent in the west.
When comparing socio-economic status indicators in the report such as average income, unemployment rate and the percentage of divorced or separated parents, however, the east part of the country received a rating of “medium high” while the west was rated “medium.”
Wanda Christensen, associate superintendent of student services for Chinook's Edge School Division, said any time there is information showing children are lagging in certain skills, it is of “great concern” to the school district.
“Because what we hear from our kindergarten teachers and our Grade 1 teachers is that the children, typically, are not coming into our school settings with the same level of skill development, or emotional development or language development than they used to,” she said.
The division, she added, does have support staff in place to help students who are lagging.
Christensen said the division sees the results of these kinds of studies as important, but she wondered how the Alberta government will actually use the information in the future.
“One of the hesitations we had before doing this kind of information gathering for the province was what are they going to do with these results,” she said. “Assess the need and then leave it for, once again, parents and communities to address without any extra funding?”
Corrie Monk, the Town of Bowden's district family and community support services community worker, presented the report to Bowden council and said children in a rural area such as the western part of Red Deer County perform better in physical development over other areas because they have more opportunities to be active outdoors, whereas children in urban settings have more access to culture.
Council ended up receiving the report on the project for information purposes.
