Text: Today's Women's Daily/Fengwang reporter Zhang Qiuying
In the mild winter sun, 12 babies around 2 years old sit around a desk less than 20 centimeters high, happily working on a tangram. Teacher Deng Yanyan, who has been engaged in preschool education for 30 years, looked at them with great satisfaction, which is a well-designed toy that allows these babbling children to unconsciously grasp the concept of "shape" in play.
According to a survey by the National Health Commission, more than one-third of the respondents reported a need for childcare services, with the strongest demand for childcare for children aged 2 to 3. In March 2019, the mainland mentioned "infant and child care institutions for 0-3 years old" for the first time in the government work report, and encouraged social forces to run childcare. On May 9, 2019, the General Office of the State Council issued the Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Development of Infant and Child Care Services for Children Under 3 Years of Age, which officially opened the prelude to the development of the childcare industry and was hailed as the first year of the childcare industry. Since then, large, medium and small childcare centers have sprung up.
The scene above comes from Deng Yanyan's nursery school opened in Linli County, Changde City, with its hardware conditions second to none in the local area, providing 120 childcare places. But so far only 12 children have been recruited. This is not deng Yanyan's poor management. Tang Zhengyuan, founder of a large childcare institution group in Hunan, told today's women's daily / Fengwang reporter that the vast majority of small and medium-sized childcare institutions he contacted did not have a high nursery rate, and most of them were in loss. According to the notice issued by the Changsha Municipal Health Commission, the enrollment rate in Changsha is only 4.2%.
On the other hand, the explosion of childcare institutions has also made government agencies and parents feel happy and afraid, whether they are safe and how to supervise, has become a new problem.
"0 to 3 years old is the most rapid period of physical and brain development in a person's life, especially in the physiological, psychological, nutritional, health care and behavioral training to give scientific guidance." The educational concepts and comprehensive literacy of parents and teachers are the key to this. Wan Xianggui, head of the preschool education major and associate professor of Hunan First Normal University, said.
How does a three-year-old industry escort the vital "newborn" 0-3-year-old infants and young children, and what kind of development confusion does it face? At the moment of fully implementing the three-child policy, how to support and standardize the development of infant and child care institutions for 0-3 years old, so that they can solve more practical difficulties in raising women and families, and provide more guarantees for the implementation of the three-child policy? Today's women's daily / Fengwang reporter conducted an investigative report on this.
Qualification Status:
"With milk dolls", childcare institutions are more "professional" than kindergartens
In Linli County, Changde City, Deng Yanyan is well known for her patience and care for her children. In May this year, because of her vision of the prospects of the childcare industry, she officially joined a large childcare institution brand and rented a space covering an area of nearly 900 square meters with an annual rent of 80,000 yuan. The entire kindergarten has a total of 17 classrooms, lounges, an indoor amusement park and an outdoor sports field.
According to national standards, childcare institutions refer to institutions that provide full-day care, half-day care, timed care, temporary care and other childcare services for infants and young children under 3 years old after registration by relevant departments and filing with health departments. It also stipulates three types of classes: nursing class (6 to 12 months, less than 10 people), nursery class (12 to 24 months, less than 15 people), and nursery class (24 to 36 months, less than 20 people).
However, most childcare facilities only accept children over 18 months (1 and a half years). "Too small a nursing class to open, parents are not at ease." Deng Yanyan said. Daycare is open from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. In the meantime, children have to play language games, music games, small crafts, and also develop life skills, such as dressing, buttoning and so on. "Gradually cultivate their self-care ability and life ability." Deng Yanyan said. In Changsha, some childcare institutions will also assign children some "work tasks" and give them a small tool to let children sweep the floor, wipe the table and so on.
▲ Children over 2 years old experience colors and shapes while playing in Deng Yanyan's nursery center.
Yang Hongxia, who has been engaged in preschool education for 22 years, also opened a childcare center five years ago. There are about 300 kinds of toys in the center. "It's actually a teaching aid." Yang Hongxia said that infants and young children understand the world through play and establish cognition and habits. Unlike traditional kindergarten education, the focus of caring for young children from 1 to 3 years old is not to regulate behavior, but to develop their nature and potential as much as possible.
The difficulty of childcare is much greater than that of traditional kindergartens. Deng Yanyan, a former senior preschool teacher, said that when the babies take a nap, they must be guarded by 2 life teachers throughout the whole process, one by one " touched over ", "some children are sweating just asleep, some are half asleep sweating, you must find them in time to change their clothes, so as not to catch a cold."
In the "Guidelines for Childcare in Childcare Institutions" issued by the National Health and Health Commission this year, the key points of care for infants and young children aged 7 to 12 months, 13 to 24 months, and 25 to 36 months in nutrition and feeding, sleep, life and health habits, movements, language, cognition, etc. are clearly required. Including: "Cultivate the habit of children sleeping alone", "Assist and guide children to wash their hands, put on and take off clothes", "encourage children to drink water by themselves, eat with a small spoon, turn their own books, and assist in storage". In terms of cognition, it is required to guide children to use various senses to explore the surrounding environment, and gradually develop cognitive abilities such as attention, memory, and thinking; encourage children to find ways to solve problems in activities such as operation, fiddling, and imitation.
▲ In a childcare center in Hunan, children learn to wear and fold clothes on their own.
Undoubtedly, this is a fairly scientific childcare system. Deng Yanyan and Yang Hongxia frankly said that the requirements of childcare institutions for institutions, kindergarten directors and teachers are far higher than those of kindergartens opened in the past. One of the important reasons why they set up institutions by joining big brands is that they hope to rely on the R&D and quality teams of big brands to provide scientific childcare courses, and at the same time, big brands will also provide training for teachers, life teachers and principals in the park.
"Don't think it's a place with children, it's actually very deeply learned." Tang Zhengyuan told today's women's newspaper / Phoenix network reporter, in view of the main points of infant care, they developed a set of "childcare service skills clearance card", from drinking water, toilet care to wipe the child's nose, toy disinfection, and then to mosquito bites, eczema, prickly heat care, etc. all need to pass the special examination, every week in the company opened 3 examination rooms, for teachers to test different projects, only 100 skills are all qualified, in order to get on the job.
In addition to childcare skills and internal management, Tang Zhengyuan believes that the site selection, park construction, internal planning and decoration of childcare institutions all require a high professional level and certain industry experience. In 2019, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued a partially revised version of the Code for the Design of Nursery Schools and Kindergartens, which regulates the location, venue, and decoration of childcare institutions. However, Tang Zhengyuan believes that "it is relatively general, some implementation details are not clear", and "many small childcare institutions really do not meet the normative conditions".
Business Status:
Low fidelity, most institutions in the "loss-making operation"
When the child was almost 1 year old, Liu Xue (pseudonym), who lived in Tianxin District of Changsha City, decided to work again, and she wanted to find a baby care center for her child.
If, like Liu Xue's family, both husband and wife must work before the child is two or three years old, there are only two options in front of them: one is to hire a nanny, and the other is to have the elderly in the family to help take care of it. However, in recent years, the price of urban nannies has soared, and the high-priced nannies who hire children throughout the day have exceeded the economic affordability of many urban white-collar workers.
"Who can take three years off to stay home with kids?" Liu Xue asked the reporter of Today's Women's Daily/Fengwang that in her view, this is a cruel reality that new parents, enterprises and society must face.
On the one hand, there is a strong demand from young parents and a large number of two-child and three-child families, but on the other hand, people in the industry like Tang Zhengyuan told reporters that most childcare institutions have a very low enrollment rate, and they are relying on feelings to "operate at a loss".
Deng Yanyan's childcare center, the cost of childcare is 1500 yuan / month, there are currently a total of 4 teachers and 2 life teachers, plus rent, water and electricity and chef salary, she claims to lose more than 40,000 yuan a month. Yang Hongxia sighed that in the 5 years since the opening of the childcare center, only the third year has made money. "Spend 100,000 yuan a month, make a profit of 60,000 yuan in the first half of the year, and 20,000 or 30,000 yuan in the second half of the year." She said that her childcare center has about 60 nursery seats, the cost of entering the nursery is 2,000 yuan / month, and there are currently about 20 children in the nursery.
Even so, the children who joined deng Yanyan and Yang Hongxia in kindergarten still came from local families with higher incomes. "The county has low wages, and it takes more than half of the salary to enter the nursery, and parents generally do not want to." Yang Hongxia said that there was once a courier mother who took a fancy to the standardized education of the childcare center and came to consult several times, but she could not come up with so much money. Yang Hongxia is also a mother, helped her, put some money inside, and finally the child was successfully admitted to the nursery.
In Tang Zhengyuan's view, the profitability of childcare centers has a clear ceiling. "The state clearly stipulates the proportion of teachers and children, and stipulates that childcare centers must be on the first floor with relatively high rents, and parents' acceptance of prices is limited." He believes that only by achieving a considerable scale can it be possible to break even or make a profit, but most institutions cannot do so at present.
"Coupled with the impact of the epidemic in the past two years, the industry has been greatly impacted." Tang Zhengyuan said that most for-profit small and medium-sized childcare centers are self-employed for baby nurses and childcare workers, or the original early education institutions and kindergartens do service extensions. If personal financial resources and resources are insufficient, they will close the door if they can't hold on.
On the other hand, the state's subsidies to the childcare industry have been exerting efforts. In October 2019, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the Implementation Plan for Special Actions to Support Social Forces in Developing Inclusive Childcare Services, which subsidizes 10,000 yuan for each new childcare position in demonstration and community childcare institutions. So far, Hunan Province has successfully declared three batches, walking in the forefront of the country, of which Changsha has won 20.55 million yuan.
Not only that, Changsha, as the forerunner of Hunan Province, also issued the Implementation Opinions of the General Office of the Changsha Municipal People's Government on Promoting the Development of Infant and Child Care Services for Children Under 3 Years of Age at the end of 2020, which clearly proposed to encourage people's governments and departments at all levels to take measures such as providing venues, reducing rent, subsidizing operating expenses, and increasing support for social forces to open infant and child care service institutions. In the inclusive childcare center in Changsha community, enjoy preferential support for community housing, rent reduction, and the same price for residents' water and electricity.
Deng Yanyan and Yang Hongxia told reporters that they were not aware of the government's support policies for childcare institutions. Tang Zhengyuan told reporters that Hunan Province has done a lot of support work for the childcare industry, but overall, the development of the childcare industry in Hunan is still very unbalanced.
Talent Status:
Nursery teachers are in short supply, and the entry threshold is not clear
What plagues the entrepreneurs of childcare centers is also the shortage of talents.
As early as the beginning of this century, the mainland gave birth to the occupation of nurseryman, and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security issued the national vocational qualification certificate for nurseryman (at present, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has updated the two professions of nurseryman and nursery teacher, "Nursery Researcher" note). In the 2009 Textbook "National Vocational Qualification Training for Baby-Care Workers", the nursery is defined as follows: "There is a connection with past childcare workers and domestic workers, and there are certain differences, specifically referring to entering the community, family or early care institutions to provide scientific and appropriate guidance for the early care, education and comprehensive development of infants aged 0 to 3 years." "Obviously, nursery workers are professionals who specialize in caring for infants and young children aged 0 to 3 years.
At present, those considered to have the validity of the admission certificate for baby nurses include the national vocational qualification certificate for baby nurses, the national vocational skill level certificate, the 1 + x certificate of the Ministry of Education, and so on. However, in the view of Tang Zhengyuan, Deng Yanyan and other heads of childcare centers, the training time to obtain these certificates is short, and the skills of training are divorced from practice and have low gold content.
Wan Xianggui, head of the preschool education major of Hunan First Normal School, told reporters: "The first batch of nursery teacher training in Hunan began in 2007, when the training was more standardized, and later with the intervention of various vocational training institutions, the market gradually became very chaotic, forming vicious competition. She further pointed out that although the state has national professional standards for baby nurses, as well as clear training content and class time requirements, many trainings are actually like fictitious. The entry threshold for nursery training institutions is not clear, and the quality of training lacks effective supervision. Many institutions only have an evaluation process, no training process, and the pass rate is very high. The ability and knowledge of certified babysitters is too different from the actual ability. Wan Xianggui said.
Due to the non-uniform entry threshold, most enterprises choose internal training nursery teachers, while a considerable number of small childcare centers do not have internal training capabilities, which brings hidden dangers to the nursery ability of teachers.
▲In the eyes of childcare practitioners, the professional quality requirements of nursery nurses are very high. During the daily learning phase, they use humanoid dolls for baby care exercises and exams.
Another problem that plagues the heads of childcare centers is that there is too much turnover of front-line teachers. "The salary is not high, the life teachers generally only have a monthly salary of more than 2,000 yuan, the social status is not high, and the pressure is high, which are the reasons for the departure or mobility of teachers." Tang Zhengyuan said that in fact, the professional knowledge of nursery nurses only accounts for a part of their professional qualities, or even the part that is not important. Professional mentality, moral literacy, anti-stress ability and emotional management ability are the core of this profession.
"Children under the age of 3, the teacher's mental health level is particularly important, the teacher loves them, the child will not say, but in fact, all feel it." Tang Zhengyuan said that because the child is too small, sometimes parents are sensitive to the handprints and mosquito bite marks left by the children fighting with each other, and they also need teachers to have certain communication skills and ability to resist pressure.
Tang Zhengyuan once met an employee, the theoretical operation is no problem, the examination results are also very good, but as soon as he takes up his post, the child cries, or the parents talk more seriously, they can't stand it, and they will leave their jobs soon.
When Yang Hongxia was training at the headquarters, she witnessed a more typical case. During the trial class, the teacher who led the teacher of a certain peer did not smile at the moment when he turned his back to the child, and was screened off by the headquarters assessment. "Because it shows that there is no love in her heart." Yang Hongxia said.
In order to keep the teachers with good patience and mental state, Tang Zhengyuan specially prepared a psychological counseling team for the teachers, often holding team-building activities to cultivate the teachers' faith with party building and traditional culture. Deng Yanyan and Yang Hongxia rely more on the "war friendship" with teachers for many years and the inextricable human relations in the county.
Whatever approach they take, they acknowledge that there is a shortage of talent. "It's nice to have hundreds of applicants and leave one." Yang Hongxia said.
▲ Yang Hongxia has been engaged in preschool education for 22 years, and began to try to run childcare 5 years ago.
Development Status:
Three years after birth, supervision and support go hand in hand
"At present, there are about 100,000 support positions in the province." A person in charge of the Population Testing and Family Development Department of the Hunan Provincial Health Commission told reporters that the reason why the number of people is an estimated number is because a considerable number of small institutions do not register and do not file, "unless the masses report, it is difficult to find." She said.
According to the provisions of the state, childcare institutions are divided into for-profit nature and non-profit nature, the non-profit nature is classified in the establishment department or civil affairs department registered, while the for-profit nature is registered by the market supervision department. Childcare institutions should file with the health department. The overall development of childcare institutions is led by the health department.
ICP Filing is not mandatory. In addition, there are a number of kindergarten-run childcare institutions (kindergartens within kindergartens) that are assigned to the head of the education department. Different management departments result in the various types of childcare institutions not being managed in one place. The current form of supervision is mainly completed by the Health Commission and various law enforcement departments to carry out comprehensive law enforcement inspections.
What makes the person in charge feel more difficult to supervise is that some of the childcare details of the childcare institutions will always have gaps unless they are monitored 24 hours a day. "For example, if the baby has to change 5 tablets of diapers a day, and the childcare institution has 3 tablets a day, how to supervise?" She believes that the supervision of infant and young child care institutions should include health, fire protection, food safety, education and many other contents, so it is necessary to establish a joint mechanism for supervision, such as the joint meeting system.
In addition to some basic safety, some childcare institutions in order to win the market competition "excessive early education" is also a major focus of regulatory difficulties. "In fact, in the spirit of the country, childcare is mainly based on childcare, and over-education is criticized. Childcare should be distinguished from early education, which is in line with the growth of children, rather than education. ”
The relevant person in charge believes that the overall nursery rate in Hunan is not high, mainly for two reasons. On the one hand, the support is not enough. "Although Hunan Province is the most popular applicant for the country's inclusive childcare special action, it is still a drop in the bucket." On the other hand, parental acceptance is not high. "High-end childcare institutions are still in short supply of more than 16,000 yuan a month, while the general low-end childcare positions are often oversupplied, in fact, this demand is not nothing, but has not been stimulated."
Parents are distrustful and have doubts about the safety of childcare facilities as the main reasons. Therefore, the establishment of a good regulatory system can also increase the retention rate. At present, Hunan is also preparing for the provincial infant and child care guidance center, and various cities and prefectures are also preparing to rely on the demonstration point of the nursery center of the women's and children's hospital, "mainly based on inclusive prices, the childcare fee is about 1,000 yuan a month." Increase childcare enrollment through public childcare centres. ”
"The development of 0-3-year-old infant and young child care can effectively solve the people's fertility dilemma that no one has to raise, alleviate the current problem of parenting difficulties, and in the long run, it is also conducive to improving everyone's willingness to have children." Therefore, vigorously promoting the development of infant and young child care services is an important measure to help the implementation of the three-child birth policy and promote the long-term balanced development of the population. Wan Xianggui said. From 2019 to the present, the childcare industry has been born for "three years", like the object it serves, it is a "baby", "it has too much confusion and unknown, and it also needs more guidance and support, but even so, it also means greater hope".