With a hybrid of in-class and online learning likely to be a part of the next school year, the Premier says the summer months will be used to see how in-class learning and in-school childcare can work together.

Having ruled out accelerating the $10-a-day program, John Horgan was asked about childcare, especially if parents are back at work on a full time basis, but their kids are not back in school.

“We will have over the summer, the opportunity to look at how we can have in class learning for students in the K-to-12 system, and also childcare at schools because we have the infrastructure there,” said Horgan.

“This had been as you know, a ten year plan and we can’t accelerate ten years of work into ten months.”

Horgan previously said that 10-year-plan to develop more childcare spaces in British Columbia, was ‘abruptly stopped’ by COVID-19.

“We’re not backing away from childcare period,” he added. “We’re trying to find the best way to deliver those services in a cost effective manner at a time when revenues have fallen to governments and family income is declining.”

While schools were closed for just over two months, a number of licensed daycares remained open to ensure that children of essential service workers were able to access the service while they worked.

Across SD73, about 70 per cent of the 4,500 students who were planning to attend school on a part-time basis did so last week. Officials report that 98 per cent of its teachers are also back in the classroom, with the remaining 2 per cent staying home for COVID related reasons.

“If we’ve learned anything over the past two and a half months its the importance of childcare to our economy,” Horgan said. “If there were any people out there that doubted this being an economic policy, not just a social policy,” he said. “We need childcare to get back into the economy.”

He also previously said there is still a need for more early childhood educators in the province.