Organisations to unite under the Education and Manpower Bureau
Kindergartens and child care centres are to be harmonised under the Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) next year after years of lobbying. They have operated separately under the control of the EMB and the Social Welfare Department (SWD) since 1986, but have been urging harmonisation because of confusion over their different codes of practice.
At present, kindergartens admit children aged two years and nine months to six years, while child care centres can take children from the age of two. Starting next year they will be unified in staffing standards, operational requirements and fees and fee remissions.
The curriculum for children above the age of three at child care centres will also be the same as that at kindergartens.
All serving and trained child care workers and kindergarten teachers will be mutually recognised by the EMB and SWD.
But Yung Hau-heung, spokesman on pre-primary education for the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union, said the government should provide further training for child care workers who obtained their qualifications before 1997, because the earlier training focused more on child care than teaching. 'It was only after 1997 that the basic training programme of kindergarten teachers and child care workers was harmonised,' she said. More than a third of child care workers were trained before 1997.