Much-needed kindergartens are on the way

By Wang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-18 07:50

Beijing will build and renovate 118 kindergartens during the next three years, targeting areas including Tiantongyuan where public education is in great demand, the education chief of the city said.

Liu Limin, director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education, made the comments during a radio show in response to a question from a mother in Tiantongyuan, who asked why the densely populated area in Changping district, north Beijing, with a population of 40,000, had no public kindergarten.

The mother surnamed Ma also complained that the education quality offered by the few primary schools in the area was very poor.

Liu replied that the commission's work schedule included building and renovating 118 kindergartens in Beijing over the next three years and that areas like Tiantongyuan and Changping district would be covered.

"Children will no longer have no kindergartens to go to by then," he said.

Liu also said that a series of measures would be put in place to enhance education quality in Tiantongyuan. They would include inducing prestigious primary and middle schools to open branches in the area, and the appointment by the education commission of elite headmasters and teachers to work at the new schools.

Statistics from the commission show that the total population in Tiantongyuan is 150,000, of which 4,050 are children of preschool age, 9,700 are children who have reached the compulsory education age and more than 2,000 are children of high school age.

At present, there are only three primary and middle schools registered with the education authorities in Tiantongyuan and the majority of kindergartens are private.

Zhao Dan a mother of a three-year-old girl who lives at Yanchengyuan, a community in Tiantongyuan, told METRO that she wasn't happy about the fees her daughter's private kindergarten charged for tuition and claimed the premises were a potential safety hazard.

"I pay 1,200 yuan every month for my daughter's kindergarten, while it costs only 400 yuan for a public kindergarten," she said.

She added the kindergarten was actually a 300 sq m, two-floor residential apartment overcrowded with 20 children and three or four teachers.

"If a fire took place I don't know if the children could evacuate safely," she said.

During the radio show, Liu also outlined the education commission's other priorities for the coming years. He said the commission would allocate 70 percent of its education fees to rural areas to reduce the education gap between urban and rural areas and he outlined the commission's plans to curb the number of students attending schools in areas where they didn't reside. These included curtailing training classes organized by middle schools with the intention of cherry-picking students, strengthening the electronic student allocation system and student status management system, and requiring each school to publicize the names of all the students admitted.