China strives to reduce preschool expenses
Print Edition
EVERY parent wants the best for their child, and the opportunity to attend a high-quality preschool is no exception.
Shen Ziqi, the mother of a three-year-old boy in Yinchuan, capital of northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, thought she was very lucky.
“A friend of mine recommended a private kindergarten and we were all very satisfied with it. The only problem was that the cost was too high,” she said. “But this year, we were surprised to find that it had become a public-interest kindergarten, and the price was just one-third of the original.”
Public-interest kindergartens are public or private kindergartens that provide quality preschool education at affordable prices.
Preschool education matters as it shapes a child’s lifelong habits. It is thought to help children learn social norms and creates an environment in which children can explore, gain a sense of self, play with their peers and build self-confidence. In the past, the Chinese government put more effort into the popularization of nine-year compulsory education, and many parents were often frustrated to find they faced fierce competition when attempting to send their children to a public kindergarten, or they had to choose a private one at a high cost.
In November 2018, a policy aiming to deepen the reform of preschool education was rolled out by the State Council, kick-starting a three-year campaign to reduce the burden of preschool expenses.
Efforts included expanding existing kindergartens, building new ones — particularly in rural and poverty-stricken areas — and absorbing more private kindergartens into the public-interest kindergarten system.
The kindergarten that Shen’s son now attends was previously private, charging 3,000 yuan (US$460) of various fees per month. Now a public-interest kindergarten, the total monthly fees are less than 1,000 yuan. Her son has now been attending for nearly a year, and Shen is very content.
“My son was relatively young for his class. The food at the school is nutritionally balanced and my son is strong and growing fast,” she said.
Data from the Yinchuan Education Bureau shows that now about 84.9 percent of kindergarten children in Yinchuan are enrolled in public-interest kindergartens, up from 22.11 percent in 2018.
Nationally, the gross preschool education enrollment rate reached 85.2 percent last year.
China last year had a total of 291,700 kindergartens in which more than 48 million children were enrolled, with nearly 85 percent of the children attending public-interest kindergartens, according to statistics from the Ministry of Education.
“Subsidies provided by the government greatly eased our financial pressure after we became a public-interest kindergarten,” said Sun Huimin, the director of a kindergarten in Yinchuan’s Xingqing District.
But kindergarten admission is still no easy feat in many places, and authorities this year vowed to build more kindergartens to further raise the preschool enrollment rate.
In May, the central government earmarked a budget of 19.84 billion yuan for the development of preschool education in 2021, an increase of 1 billion yuan, or 5.31 percent, over the previous year. The funds will be mainly used to improve infrastructure and the teaching quality in early childhood education.
A Yinchuan resident surnamed Min said his son will soon be turning three, the minimum age for kindergarten.
“There are public kindergartens, public-interest kindergartens and private kindergartens near our home, which allow parents to choose freely,” said Min.
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