This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Kindergarten is an important time in a child's life, during which children acquire and strengthen the skills needed to participate and learn in a school environment. Going to school regularly is an important part of this.
Research shows that children learn more when they attend school regularly. Missing school often can make it harder for children to learn and keep up with their classmates. Children miss school for many reasons.
Being sick is one of the most common reasons. However, not all children who often miss school are sick or have a long-term health condition. Research shows that many things can affect school attendance, including children's health and behavior, family life, their community and their school.
School absences increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and have stayed high even after public health measures were eased. However, we don't know much about how missing school in elementary school is related to children's development before and after the pandemic. Research on this topic is limited in Canada, partly because it can be difficult to collect information about school absences.
It's important to study this in kindergarten because children's development at this age is linked to future academic and socioemotional outcomes. In our study, we wanted to find out how often Canadian kindergarten children missed school before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We also wanted to know whether missing school was linked to how ready children were for elementary school, as captured by the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a measure of children's age-appropriate abilities and behaviors assessed by kindergarten teachers for every child in their classroom.
The EDI questions focus on developmental skills that are easily observable in the kindergarten classroom and crucial for a child's successful transition to elementary school. We studied information from large groups of kindergarten children. One group attended kindergarten before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the other attended after the pandemic began.
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