A million Canadian kids missing out on free education money

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Released today in the Institute for Research on Public Policy’s Policy Options: This new article by Andrew Parkin draws on a more extensive research paper commissioned by the Omega Foundation.

A million Canadian kids missing out on free education money.

Policy Options. October 25, 2016.

Policies designed to get kids into post-secondary education need to focus on early intervention, including early access to savings.

Since the 2015 election, the Liberal government has made two major adjustments to federal programs targeted at children and youth.  First, the uniform payment to every family with children was replaced by the new Canada Child Benefit, a benefit worth more to lower income families and withheld from the wealthy. In a similar vein, the government announced it would phase out some of the existing tax credits for post-secondary education (PSE), which were available to all families with taxable income, so it could use the savings to increase the value of grants for students from low-income families.

Still, the work to improve support to children from low-income families is not done – 1 million low-income children each year are still missing out on the Canada Learning Bond.

Read complete article.

By Andrew Parkin. Dr. Parkin is an independent public policy analyst and consultant specializing in education. He was associate executive director of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation and director general of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada.


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