The Paper's reporter Ma Yiming intern Lu Ming
From the end of April to the beginning of May every year, education departments across the country begin to register information on children aged 3 or above who have access to kindergartens in their respective areas.
In recent years, childcare and old-age care have become a hot topic in the field of people's livelihood. During the two sessions in 2021, the supply of childcare services is also one of the hot topics of discussion, and Qiu Licheng, a deputy to the National People's Congress, and Zhou Jin, a member of the Hainan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, have put forward relevant suggestions for building a fertility support system and developing public childcare services.
At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed that new progress should be made in the areas of early childhood education, learning and education, income from labor, medical treatment for the sick, support for the elderly, housing for the home, and support for the weak. Among them, "early childhood" includes both pre-school education for children aged 3-6 years and childcare services for infants and young children aged 0-3 years.
With the implementation of the "comprehensive two-child" policy, the demand for childcare services in families has increased significantly, but the supply rate of childcare services in China is still insufficient. According to reports, 40% of China's child-rearing families currently have childcare needs, and the nursery rate for infants and young children aged 0-3 is 4.1%, most of which are enrolled in private institutions, while the enrollment rate of infants and young children under 3 years old in developed countries is between 25% and 55%.
In response to the public's demand for childcare services, the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and the Outline of Long-term Goals for 2035 take into account the number of trusts as a new indicator of people's livelihood in the 14th Five-Year Plan. The document proposes that in the future, the number of child care spaces for infants and young children under 3 years old per 1,000 people in China will be increased from the current 1.8 to 4.5, and by 2035, more than 500,000 demonstration inclusive childcare will be added.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, as of the end of 2019, the number of births in China from 2017 to 2019 was 17.23 million, 15.23 million and 14.65 million, respectively, of which the number of infants and young children under the age of 3 exceeded 40 million.
On March 1, 2019, teachers interacted with children in a childcare facility in Guangzhou. IC diagram
As the first city in China to propose management standards for childcare services, Shanghai has also written childcare into the "14th Five-Year Plan", proposing to strive to increase the number of childcare for infants and young children under three years old by 2025 by 2025, and will further regulate the childcare service market. According to the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Statistics, from 2017 to 2019, the number of births in Shanghai was 117,700, 98,400 and 91,400, respectively.
In April 2018, Shanghai promulgated the "1+2" new policy for the childcare of children aged 0-3, encouraging social organizations, enterprises, institutions and individuals to "multi-subject participation" in childcare services. In September last year, Shanghai also released the "Shanghai Three-Year Action Plan for Childcare Services (2020-2022)", which made more detailed plans for the development of childcare services in Shanghai to build a more complete childcare service system.
Before the promulgation of the policy, many private institutions in the market that provide childcare services for infants and young children aged 0-3 years old were mostly registered with the "Education Consulting Enterprise" in the Bureau of Industry and Commerce, and only had the qualifications to provide early education services. Shanghai's new childcare policy clarifies the construction standards for childcare institutions, so that such market-oriented early education institutions can be transformed and improved against the standard policies, and apply for childcare qualifications. At the same time, district-level childcare service guidance centers have also been set up in each district to solve the "last mile" problem of childcare qualification application and supervision.
According to the Shanghai Childcare Service Management Platform for Children Under 3 years of Age, there are currently 212 for-profit childcare institutions in Shanghai that have issued notices, 89 non-profit childcare institutions, and 1 free welfare childcare center. The fees of for-profit childcare institutions range from 3,000 yuan / month to 18,800 yuan / month, and most of the fees are above 6,000 yuan. The fees of the 89 non-profit childcare institutions are mainly 3,000 yuan / month, and the rest range from 1800 yuan / month to 23,000 yuan / month.
According to the visit of the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) reporter, the childcare supply methods that currently exist in the childcare market in Shanghai are divided into public and private kindergarten nursery classes, early education center nursery classes, community public childcare centers, enterprise and institution parks and other collectively run nurseries, market-oriented childcare institutions in business circles and communities, and family-style small nursery classes according to the main body of operation.
The "Shanghai Three-Year Action Plan for Childcare Services (2020-2022)" mentions that by 2022, more than 50% of kindergartens in the city will open nursery classes. According to the "Shanghai Three-Year Action Plan for Preschool Education (2019-2021)" released in September 2019, there are 1627 kindergartens in Shanghai, and as of 2019, a total of 391 kindergartens have opened nursery classes, thus calculating that the kindergarten nursery setting rate has reached 24%. This figure is still some distance from the 50 per cent target.
In addition to the above-mentioned institutions with officially certified childcare qualifications, another type of childcare institution that is more common in the market and can also be accepted by parents is a private early education institution that only has early education service qualifications but also provides childcare services, that is, the market-based childcare institution mentioned above. For such institutions, it is not easy to apply for childcare qualifications.
A person in charge of a market-oriented early education institution revealed to the surging news reporter that his store is a franchise store of a chain of early education brands, which opened in early 2019. As an institution providing childcare services, he hopes to be "recognized by society" by applying for childcare qualifications, but he encounters many obstacles in the actual application process.
At present, if a market-based childcare institution wants to obtain childcare service qualifications by applying for a childcare notice, it needs to comply with the provisions of the Interim Measures for the Administration of Childcare Institutions for Children Under 3 years of Age in Shanghai (hereinafter referred to as the Measures), but the requirements for site selection and staffing ratio in the Measures are relatively high. Some media have reported that after Shanghai took the lead in introducing the "1 + 2" document of the early childhood care service system in the country, the entry threshold of childcare institutions was raised, and the Shanghai Women's Federation believed that more than 70%-80% of the operating costs of childcare institutions implemented in accordance with the standards would be occupied by rent and labor costs, and the loss in the first two years of operation was more common. The person in charge of the institution interviewed by the reporter said in response to the above phenomenon, "Some institutions with childcare qualifications are closed for these reasons because they cannot achieve profitability within a year after getting the qualifications." ”
On the one hand, the childcare institutions that received the childcare notice also had problems such as dissatisfaction with the source of students and large turnover of personnel, and supporting policies were still lacking. There are also some childcare institutions due to the large investment in the early transformation, the operating costs have increased, so that the charging standards have been greatly increased. Even in some districts, there are cases where institutions choose to directly stop the issuance of childcare qualifications because of the poor operating results of institutions after the issuance of childcare qualifications. On the other hand, market-oriented early education institutions also hope to apply for childcare qualifications and operate in compliance, but profitability is the purpose and premise of institutional operation, so these institutions are often stumbled by the high entry threshold of childcare qualifications and fall into a dilemma.
In recent years, the new childcare policy promulgated by Shanghai has filled the policy gaps in related fields and provided support for the construction of a childcare service system guided by the government, with family as the mainstay and multi-party participation. However, many new problems have emerged in the process of landing the policy, and it is urgent to introduce more detailed rules to provide guidance for market norms.
As the supply of childcare has once again become a hot spot in people's livelihood, many scholars have given relevant policy suggestions in combination with their own practical research experience. From today onwards, the Paper's Institute will publish a special topic on "Handling Childcare", combing the development history of childcare services in China, paying attention to the current situation of the childcare market, and inviting scholars to make suggestions for the formulation and implementation of childcare policies from the perspectives of family parenting, revision of detailed rules, and innovative childcare service supply methods based on actual research experience.
Editor-in-charge: Wu Yingyan
Proofreader: Ding Xiao