The southeast is seeing a few new early childhood education programs pop up thanks to funding from the provincial government.

Saskatchewan committed over $12 million for the 2023-24 academic year as part of the Canada-Saskatchewan Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement for the new programs.

One of the organizations that applied for the program and will be receiving the funds is Southeast College, with Executive Director of Communication and Strategic Enrollment Sheena Onrait detailing what's coming.

“We received funding for a full-time program to fund year one of a two-year diploma program for Estevan that will be located on our Estevan campus. We also received funding to run two-part time level one programs at our Assiniboia and Indian Head campuses, so we're very excited about this opportunity to be able to educate and provide more childcare providers in Saskatchewan.” 

Southeast College does have experience delivering both full-time and part-time programs on childhood education.

“Early childhood education is something that we have delivered consistently for as many years as I can remember. We've run programs typically in, in our larger, more urban centres, so your Estevan and your Weyburn, and typically they are on a part-time basis. However, we have run some full-time programs on the First Nation partner communities as well. It's something we've done for years and it's super exciting to be able to expand and to have this flexibility to be able to help fund the programs for our students.” 

The program begins this fall, as Onrait says they're well suited to set up programs quickly.

“We have really great experience running the early childhood education programs. It was an easy one to be able to put together and we were able to respond very quickly. That's the beauty of regional colleges is that we typically are able to respond quickly and be flexible to what's happening in our communities and the need of our communities. This is just one of those needs where we were able to respond to very quickly.” 

Both the full-time and part-time programs will have 14 seats open, with Onrait encouraging people to sign up quickly.

“I would just encourage prospective students that if they are interested in applying, they should get that application in very quickly. We have had a very, very good response over the last couple of days. So it's only been open on our website for a couple of days and the response is wonderful. We are able to accept 14 students until our full-time program in Estevan and we are just working on getting our schedule up for the part-time program in Assiniboia and Indian Head. So those will be coming along shortly within the next week or so as well.”