Quebec’s childcare network is under more scrutiny than ever. In its 2024 report, the Auditor General of Quebec (Vérificateur général du Québec) found that roughly 30% of evaluated daycares failed the province’s educational quality standard, and that the share of qualified educators keeps declining. For directors, the message isn’t to panic — it’s that quality is now measured, published, and visible to parents. Here’s what the findings say, and how a well-run centre can turn quality into a strength.
Two different things: conformity vs. educational quality
It helps to separate two processes the Ministère de la Famille runs in parallel:
- Compliance inspections — health, safety, ratios, premises, documentation.
- Educational quality evaluation — the quality of interactions, planning, and the learning environment, assessed against the ministry’s reference framework Accueillir la petite enfance.
The headlines below are mostly about the educational quality evaluation, which now applies to all recognized services (CPEs, garderies, and home-based care), and whose results are shown on the ministry’s interactive map.
The numbers
According to the Auditor General’s 2024 report and reporting on it:
- ~30% of evaluated CPEs and garderies failed the educational quality evaluation cumulatively since 2018 (about 29% between April 2019 and November 2022).
- Among garderies (subsidized and non-subsidized), the failure rate reached about 60% in 2022–2023 — far higher than CPEs.
- The share of centres missing the 2-of-3 qualified-educator ratio rose from 32% to 46% between 2018 and 2023.
- Follow-up was weak: the ministry never received about a third of the corrective action plans that failing centres were required to submit.
- Regionally (April 2019–November 2022), failure rates were higher in Montréal (34%) and Laval (39%).
- About 70% of CPEs and garderies were evaluated between 2019 and 2025 (Ministère de la Famille).
Sources — verify the figures yourself: Auditor General of Québec, Annual Report (May 2024), Chapter 4 — Quality of educational childcare (full PDF); Ministère de la Famille. The numbers above are quoted directly from Chapter 4.
Why quality is slipping
The Auditor General links rising failure rates to the shortage of qualified educators — when centres can’t staff the recommended ratio of trained educators, the quality of interactions and planning suffers. The same report flags follow-ups on struggling centres as “insufficient.” In other words, the pressure is structural, not the fault of any one team.
What this means for directors
Two things are now true at once:
- Quality is public. Parents can look up a centre’s results. A good result is a real differentiator; a gap is visible.
- Documentation is your defence. Much of what evaluators and inspectors look for — consistent daily practice, planning, ratios, records — is easier to demonstrate when it’s captured day to day instead of reconstructed before a visit.
How a well-run centre responds
You can’t hire your way out of a province-wide labour shortage overnight, but you can make your everyday quality visible and consistent:
- Capture daily practice as it happens — meals, rest, activities, observations — so educators’ work is documented without extra admin. See digital daily reports.
- Turn accumulated observations into clear progress reports that show intentional, planned learning.
- Keep families informed and build the parent trust that surveys and evaluations increasingly reward.
That’s the gap MonGardy is built to close: it helps directors and educators document, track, and demonstrate the quality of their care — so an evaluation becomes a chance to show your work, not a scramble. For the bigger picture, see our guide for daycare & CPE directors.
In short
Quebec’s quality bar is rising and increasingly public. Centres that document their daily practice and communicate well with families are best placed to meet it. See how MonGardy helps or get started — the first year is free for new centres.
Statistics: Vérificateur général du Québec, Rapport annuel (2024), Chapter 4 — Qualité des services de garde éducatifs à l’enfance; Ministère de la Famille.
