Baby boom causes run on kindergartens
- Source: Global Times
- [09:18 May 20 2010]
- Comments
Parents wait for their kids outside a public kindergarten on Weihai Road as police stand guard Wednesday afternoon. Photo: Cai Xianmin
By Chen Xiaoru
A baby boom coinciding with the Chinese Year of the Pig three years ago is putting pressure on this year's public kindergarten intake in Shanghai, with demand for places so high that many parents are splashing out on more expensive private pre-schools for their toddlers.
"We received 300 or so applications for the 120 places we had available on May 16, the only day of the year that we accept new applications for enrolment," Chang Tian, a teacher with the public kindergarten Hehuachi in Huangpu district told the Global Times yesterday. "Hopeful parents queued outside the gate from the early morning," she said.
The Chinese Year of the Pig, which last fell between February 16, 2007 and February 6, 2008 saw a higher-than-usual number of births as it is believed to be a particularly auspicious year in which to be born.
Chang said that although public kindergartens are often oversubscribed, the "golden pig babies" are making the problem particularly acute this year.
"One queuing parent who returned home to get a photo of his child needed for registration found his child's place had been taken when he returned to the kindergarten," said Chang.
There were 350,000 children in Shanghai's public and private kindergartens last year, with the number estimated to surge to around 500,000 by 2011, Xue Yangming, the director of the Shanghai Education Bureau, told the Xinhua News Agency. Shanghai has 1,057 kindergartens in total, and education authorities have vowed to build another 400 to relieve the enrolment pressure, though they have not given a timescale for construction.
Top public kindergartens in the city charge around 1,000 yuan ($146.4) per month, while private ones charge up to 10,000 yuan ($1,464.3) per month.
In a bid to control the number of applicants, the Hehuachi Kindergarten is from this year requiring all prospective students to be Shanghai hukou (residence permit) holders, said Chang.
"It's an unfair fact that kindergartens favor local kids because there are not enough government subsidies to cover pre-school education," Xiong Bingqi, vice director of the 21st Century Education Research Academy, told the Global Times yesterday.
Xiong said that there are not enough public kindergartens to cater for local children, let alone children from outside of the city.
"It is essential that the central government increases investment in pre-school education," said Xiong. "It should also consider making a period of kindergarten compulsory for all children, as it is of the same importance to a child's development as primary and secondary education are."
