The Nova Scotia government is expanding care before and after school and bus service as it attempts to make its pre-primary program more accessible.
Education Minister Zach Churchill says the before-and-after-school program will be expanded to 40 sites this school year in partnership with regulated child care or recreation providers.
Churchill says the expansion would continue where needed in 2020, when pre-primary is to be available to all four-year-olds in the province.
Churchill says bus service will also be available for eligible pre-primary children at 56 sites this fall, while the remaining pre-primary sites will receive busing next year.
The province says the sites receiving busing this September are in areas where all eligible pre-primary children in a class could be accommodated on existing buses and in some cases, where participation was low.
“Families told us that before-and-after programming and transportation would make it easier for them to access pre-primary,” Churchill said in a news release Tuesday.
“Removing these barriers will help make sure families can access this important early learning opportunity.”
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