Preschool services become a priority
The central government has ordered local jurisdictions to make preschool services a priority over other educational aspects in terms of both quality and quantity.
In an attempt to address complaints made nationwide about the difficulty of placing children in kindergartens, the State Council told all provincial, municipal and regional governments and ministries and institutions to spare no efforts in improving services at government-run kindergartens.
They were also told to train 10,000 kindergarten directors and teachers within three years.
Spending to promote preschool education should be included in local government budgets, and the central government would subsidise programmes in less-developed regions, a State Council statement, issued on Sunday, said. It also highlighted the importance of regulating fees and ensuring children's safety.
Fees and the falling number of schools have long been a concern for parents, especially for families living in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
For example, in Beijing, a city with a population of more than 17 million, the number of kindergartens has dropped from 3,056 in 1996 to the current 1,266.
The China Youth Daily reported on a survey in which over 97 per cent of respondents had complained about high fees. Worse still, about two-thirds of rural children do not attend kindergartens because of a general ignorance about the importance of preschool education, according to research by Beijing Normal University's China Institute of Education Policy.
The enrolment rate for three-year preschool education on the mainland was 50.9 per cent last year and the rate for the one-year preschool programme was 74 per cent, according to the research.
One of the main reasons for the shortage of kindergartens has been a lack of support from the central and regional governments.
School safety has been hotly debated since at least 16 children were killed and 70 injured in a spate of assaults on pupils since March. In the first case, eight kindergarten pupils were stabbed to death by a man in Fujian .
