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Thousands of private kindergartens in China went out of business in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic and low birth rates. Photo: Xinhua

Over 5,200 private Chinese kindergartens went out of business in 2020

  • Experts and business owners blame a mix of the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s plummeting birth rate
  • The country has also tried to make preschools more public, to mixed results
Thousands of privately-owned kindergartens went out of business last year, with experts and business owners blaming the coronavirus pandemic and China’s slumping birth rate.
Official data released last week showed that over 5,200 kindergartens closed in 2020, just over 3 per cent of the total. According to the Ministry of Education, it was the first decrease in private Chinese kindergartens in a decade. The ministry also said China experienced the first decrease in the total number of private schools, ranging from preschools to universities, in a decade.
Privately-run kindergartens, which account for 57 per cent of all kindergartens in China, enrolled 850,000 fewer children in 2020 than in 2019. That was a drop of 9.4 per cent.
Young kids in China were often the last to return to normal during Covid-19 outbreaks, putting pressure on private education. Photo: Getty Images

Wang Ying, who operated a kindergarten in Shandong province in eastern China since 2009, had to close it in March 2021 after failing to enrol enough students.

“When there were reports of a local outbreak of the coronavirus and lockdowns were implemented, the young kids were always the last to return to school. So kindergartens became one of the most vulnerable sectors in the pandemic,” she said.

When she started the school, she enroled more than 100 kids per year, but by early 2021 the numbers dropped below 50, she said.

To make matters worse, the rent for her over 200-square metre property soared from less than 6,000 yuan (US$928) per year to 120,000 yuan (US$18,570) annually.

Wang said a lack of students forced at least four other private kindergartens in her county to shut down since the pandemic first broke out in Wuhan in December 2019.

Kindergarteners take a nap after classes in Shanghai, China. Photo: Getty Images

Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the National Institute of Education, said the falling number of newborns in recent years might have contributed to the shrinking of the preschool education sector.

One statistic supports this notion: the percentage of families that can afford to send their children to kindergartens rose to 85 per cent last year, but the number of newly admitted kindergarteners per year has fallen from 20 million pupils in 2015 to 17.9 million in 2020.

The enrolment slowdown came amid a severe decrease in births in China in recent years. Chinese mothers gave birth to 12 million babies last year, the lowest number since the country was in the grips of its Great Famine, which ended 60 years ago.

This marked an 18 per cent decrease from 2019, which had also achieved new lows for the past half-century. Regional indications from the first six months of 2021 point to the likelihood of a low birth rate for this year as well.

One other factor in the drop in private education is a push from the central government for more affordable, inclusive, preschool education, which began in 2018.

Private kindergartens in China tend to have more activities for children. Photo: Xinhua

The ratio of private kindergartens to all kindergartens dropped from nearly 70 per cent in 2011 to 57 per cent in 2020.

In 2019, the State Council, China’s top administrative body, announced that all kindergartens located inside residential communities must be publicly owned or charge fees according to government-guided prices.

Chu said that recent shifts in the industry meant parents are generally paying less for tuition but that the quality of education has also dipped.

“We’ve seen a drop in the quality of the industry in general, as traditionally private ones provide better services and have more activities for the kids,” he said.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Private kindergartens hit by virus, low birth rate
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