Parents' grief over kindergarten blaze provides rare bond with villagers of fireworks blast school

The fire that claimed the lives of 13 children in a kindergarten in Nanchang city yesterday was the second major school accident in Jiangxi province in less than three months.

An explosion levelled a three-storey primary school in Fanglin village in March, killing 42 children and teachers.

While both accidents occurred in education centres, their victims were children from two vastly different worlds.

The Jiangxi Radio and TV Arts Kindergarten is one of a number of elite schools in Nanchang. Xinhua said 30 staff members, including teachers, cooks and child-minders, look after 274 children. The youngsters live in the kindergarten but go home at weekends.

Opened two years ago, the three-storey kindergarten has a total area of 7,000 square metres and many senior cadres in Nanchang send their children there. The kindergarten charges depend on a child's age, with monthly fees running as high as 1,700 yuan (HK$1,598).

The schoolchildren in Fanglin village came from a very different background. The monthly fees paid by some of the families who send their toddlers to the Nanchang facility are more than the annual earnings of some parents in Fanglin.

Officials have admitted that the local government in Fanglin was so poor that the children were required to make fireworks under a 'work-study programme' in 1999 so that they could continue their education.