How chronic absenteeism shifted in Canadian kindergarten after COVID-19

Students are dropped off at school ahead of their first day of classes in Pickering, Ont., in September 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston How chronic absenteeism shifted in Canadian kindergarten after COVID‑19 Published: September 13, 2026 8.10am EDT Share article Print article 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 behaviour, family life, their community and their school. School absences increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and have stayed high even after public health measures subsided. However, we don’t know much about how missing school in primary 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 socio-emotional outcomes. Study about kindergarten absences 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 primary school, as captured by a measure of children’s age-appropriate abilities and behaviours known as the Early Development Instrument (EDI), assessed by kindergarten teachers for every child in their classroom. The EDI questions focus on developmental skills easily observable in the kindergarten classroom crucial for a child’s successful transition to primary school. We studied information from large groups of kindergarten children. One group attended kindergarten before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the other after the pandemic began. The study included children from publicly funded schools in eight of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories. One group in the study attended…