Regulation

Educator-to-child ratios in New Brunswick: how the rule actually works

A ratio is not an end-of-day average: it is a constraint that holds at every moment. Here is how to read it, and where it breaks in practice.

Published on September 8, 2026 · M2atech Solutions Inc.

The educator-to-child ratio is the most visible rule in daycare work: how many children one person may supervise, by age. It is also the rule most often believed to be met when it is not, because it gets checked against a theoretical roster rather than the children actually present at a given moment.

This guide explains how a ratio is read, when it breaks during a real day, and what a director can put in place to know about it before an inspector does.

A ratio is read by age group, not by daycare

There is no single ratio for a daycare: there is one per age band, and it tightens as children get younger. An infant needs constant supervision; a four-year-old much less. A centre serving four age groups therefore applies four different rules at once, in four different rooms.

Below are the values KidSecure proposes by default to a New Brunswick daycare when it imports its provincial ratios. They are a starting point and stay editable room by room.

Age group	Children per educator
0 to 2 years	3
2 to 3 years	5
3 to 4 years	7
4 to 5 years	10

These are the software's default values. Before adopting them as is, confirm them with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development: regulations change, and the text in force governs, not a table.

What counts is children present, not children enrolled

A ten-space room almost never holds ten children. It holds seven on Monday, eleven on Wednesday if a neighbouring group is merged, and five during March break. The ratio is computed on children physically present and educators physically present, at the moment you look.

That has a direct consequence: an attendance record kept at the real time beats a sheet filled in from memory at the end of the day. Without timestamps, there is no way to say afterwards whether the room was compliant at ten in the morning.

The four moments when a ratio breaks

In practice, non-compliance almost never happens mid-morning, when everyone is in place. It happens in the gaps.

Opening. Children arrive faster than staff are scheduled, especially when a family shows up before its usual time.
Breaks. An educator leaving for lunch temporarily leaves the room short unless someone covers precisely.
End-of-day merges. Combining two rooms at four o'clock mixes two age groups: the stricter of the two ratios then applies.
Unplanned absences. An educator off sick puts the room out of ratio from opening, without anyone deciding it.

These four situations share one trait: they are predictable. Which means they can be watched.

Monitoring without thinking about it

A director cannot recompute a ratio in their head every ten minutes. Three practices make it manageable.

Timestamp arrivals and departures, for children and staff alike, instead of ticking a box.
Show each room's current ratio continuously, instead of computing it on demand.
Get alerted at the moment of the breach, not in a monthly report where nothing can be fixed any more.

It also changes how an inspection is prepared: when records are kept day by day, a visit is prepared by exporting a report, not by reconstructing three months of attendance.

Ratio and capacity: two different constraints

Ratio is often confused with the facility's licensed capacity. These are two separate limits, and meeting one says nothing about the other. Capacity caps the total number of children the space may hold, based on floor area and layout. The ratio caps the number of children per adult, within each group.

A daycare can therefore sit well under capacity and still be out of ratio, simply because two educators are missing on the same morning. The reverse happens too: a full team does not make a room compliant if it holds more children than the space allows.

In practice, capacity is checked once a year and ratio is checked continuously. That is why the second one needs a tool and the first one needs a note in the file.

What an inspection looks at

An inspection visit is not limited to counting the adults in the room. It cross-checks several records against each other: the child attendance register, staff schedules and timesheets, the group list and individual files. An inconsistency between two of those draws attention far more surely than a single number.

The most common failure is not the breach itself: it is being unable to demonstrate, six weeks later, what actually happened on a Tuesday morning. A timestamped register answers that question; a paper sheet filled in from memory cannot.