Canada needs to implement a national tracking system to gauge learning in babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers to find out why almost one in three kids enters kindergarten with a learning or behaviour problem, says a government-funded agency.

The Canadian Council on Learning, in a report released Wednesday, said national testing is needed because Canada is missing the mark when it comes to measuring how young children learn, thus robbing the country of a clear picture of whether they are being given the best possible start.

"You can't fix something you haven't identified properly," said council president Paul Cappon.

"We need some national benchmarks of early childhood learning so we can make the best decisions for our children."

The report cites two separate studies, one published in Alberta in 2002 and the other in British Columbia in 2005, showing that 30 per cent of children enter school with learning or behavioural problems that could hamper success in academics and in life.

"The question is, how are we going to intervene to help those children," said Cappon.

What is needed, he said, is ongoing tracking from birth to school age, at home or in daycare, of a child's physical, social, language and cognitive skills.

There also must be a central system to share the information nationwide, he said.

As it stands, there is a patchwork of tracking across the country….

Statistics Canada already measures children periodically through its National Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth. However, the surveys do not focus on learning and they only provide snapshots in time, Cappon said.

For instance, the gross motor skills of babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers were last measured in 2000-01, according to the report…

The report asserts that there is too much emphasis on the "polarized" debate over whether home care or daycare is best for children and that "in a world where one size does not fit all ... we need common benchmarks where the data is cohesive, coherent and comparable in order to access results."….