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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
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Mandy Zuoin Shanghai
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.
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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.
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“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.
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