Summer holiday care scheme sells out fast
Print Edition
ALL of the places on the “Love Summer Care” school holiday program in downtown areas of Shanghai were snapped up within hours of the application process opening yesterday, organizers said.
“There were about 10,000 places available at downtown venues and they were quickly filled,” an unnamed official from the Youth League Commission told Shanghai Daily.
The government-funded scheme was set up last year to provide parents with somewhere to leave their children during the school holiday ... or at least part of it.
While the holiday lasts about two months, the programs run for just three weeks. Despite the discrepancy, the courses are popular with parents, as at 600 yuan (US$100) per child they are far cheaper than the private-sector alternatives.
At the Youth and Children Center in the Pudong New Area, some parents queued overnight to secure one of the 160 available places.
“I got here at 6pm yesterday and there were already several people ahead of me in the queue,” said Guo, who managed to get a place for her 8-year-old son.
“There are lots of commercial programs to choose from, but I trust the government scheme more,” she said.
Another woman, surnamed Fu, said she paid someone to wait in line for her overnight so she could secure a spot for her 9-year-old son. The mother “took over” at 6am, she said.
“My son is too naughty for his grandparents, and we don’t want him to waste the summer holidays playing around and learning nothing,” Fu said.
A man surnamed Shi said he too wanted a place on the course for his son to save the child’s grandparents the burden of looking after him.
“If they get too tired taking care of my son, my wife and I will end up having to take care of them,” he said.
Tang Guoping, who was in charge of admissions at the Caoyang Community Culture Center, said people began queuing up before 7:30am and that the 60 available places were all taken before 11am.
A total of 20,000 places are available on this year’s “Love Summer Care,” with about half of them in downtown areas.
Places in suburban areas are not in such high demand, the Commission said.
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