(Canada) NWT: Increase in kindergarteners with special needs post COVID

May 26, 2026, After the Covid‑19 pandemic, thousands more kindergarteners faced developmental challenges | Yellowknifer

Children with special needs often experience a range of early developmental challenges that can affect their readiness for learning and their participation in school.

This population includes children with a wide range of neurodevelopmental conditions (like autism and ADHD) as well as physical or sensory conditions and impairments.

Overall, children with special needs are more likely to experience challenges in one or more areas of their development compared to other children their age. For example, about 80 per cent of kindergarten children with identified special needs do not yet have the skills needed to fully benefit from classroom learning, compared to 27 per cent of children without special needs.

In Canada, children with special health needs are more likely to live in lower-income neighbourhoods and to experience poorer developmental outcomes.

The Covid-19 pandemic, declared in March 2020, changed many aspects of everyday life for young children across Canada. Although all children were affected, those with special needs were often impacted more deeply. . . .

Status of inequities

Our team at the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University produced a report that provided a comprehensive description of the status of inequities in early childhood development in Canada for children with special needs, both before and after the onset of the pandemic. The Public Health Agency of Canada commissioned the report.

We used population-level data and five different neighbourhood-level socioeconomic measures of inequities, including neighbourhood income after tax. The child development data came from the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a 103-item, teacher-completed questionnaire that assesses kindergarten children’s ability to meet age-appropriate developmental expectations across five developmental domains.

We examined EDI data collected before and after the onset of the pandemic to see whether there were differences in teachers’ reports of children’s development in kindergarten.

The EDI database consisted of data from both a pre- and post-pandemic cohort of children (2017-20; 2020-23). This cohort comprises a total of 540,005 children with special needs from seven provinces and one territory: Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, British Columbia and Northwest Territories.

We only selected provinces and territories with EDI data collection in both pre- and post-pandemic onset periods.

Defining special needs . . .

After the Covid-19 pandemic, a higher percentage of children with special needs didn’t meet age-appropriate developmental expectations in one or more developmental domains: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, communication skills and general knowledge. These children are considered developmentally vulnerable. . . .

Importantly, even though these patterns were similar before and after the pandemic, the overall number of children with special needs who were developmentally vulnerable increased after Covid-19.

On average, there was a 2.5 percentage-point increase in developmental vulnerability. While this may seem small, it represents thousands more children facing developmental challenges than just a few years earlier. . . .

Our findings have important implications for policy and practice. Understanding how developmental vulnerability is associated with neighbourhoods can help identify where support is most needed. There is a need to ensure children in more disadvantaged areas have access to health care, early intervention and specialized supports.

Schools play a key role by identifying special needs early, ideally starting in kindergarten, so that appropriate supports, such as individualized education plans, can be put in place as soon as possible.

The increase in both the number of kindergarten children with special needs and the proportion experiencing developmental challenges since the pandemic means that there will be more children requiring specialized assistance and accommodation in later grades.

Our findings highlight the growing pressures on children, families and health and education systems, and underscore the importance of responding with timely and targeted support.