Society

78.5% feel difficulty of kindergarten crunch

By Gao Qihui (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-07-06 17:01

According to an online survey of 10,400 people across China, 78.5% of respondents feel the difficulty of enrolling a child in kindergarten, China Youth Daily reported.

It is more and more difficult for parents to enroll their children in kindergarten, sometimes even harder than entering a university. The 78.5% of respondents said they can feel the difficulty around them, according to the survey conducted by China Youth Daily

"Some parents even pre-enroll in a kindergarten before the baby's birth," said Hu Hua, head of the Experimental Kindergarten affiliated to China Women's University. Hu said that the applicants outnumbered enrollment by four to one in the kindergarten.

Why the tough competition? According to the survey, 62.2% of respondents cite high tuition in private kindergartens as the main reason; 59.6 percent think the shortage of state-owned kindergartens attribute to the problem.

To ease the difficulty of entering kindergarten, 89.6% of respondents agree that preschool education should be brought into the range of compulsory education; 71.6% respondents say more state-owned kindergartens should be built.

There is also a huge shortage of kindergarten teachers, with the teacher-student ratio at 1 to 24 in 2008, and 58.7% of all specialized kindergarten teachers have not obtained the certificate for preschool education.