Society

Preschool closures revisit a sore spot

By Zuo Likun (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-09-28 11:10

More than 1,350 private pre-schools in East China's Fujian province have been closed for failing a security and hygiene inspection and another 1, 245 could lose their licenses if they fail to meet a deadline for improvements, the Fuzhou Daily reported. It is not known how many pupils in all will be affected by the mass closures.

Authorities had demanded Chinese schools improve security following a series of attacks on pupils earlier this year which left dozens dead and terrorized the nation. As part of the security efforts, Fujian authorities demanded private preschool buildings undergo costly earthquake-resistant checks and be redecorated with fire-resistant materials.

However, the well-intended reform has led to undesirable fallout. Take the capital city of Fuzhou as an example, 148 private preschools were closed, leaving 8,690 children without a place, many of whom are said to be from migrant workers' families.

The few options remaining for them include applying to licensed private preschools that may increase the cost of their service following the overhaul, or the nearly-inaccessible public preschools that are literally snowed with "Tiao Zi", the unofficial notes from high-ups asking for a back-door favor.

An editorial by the broadcaster China National Radio (CNR) last week questioned if such a measure would spiral into a cacophony of unequal sharing of education resources between the have and have-not.

The closures in Fujian have highlighted the much-debated problem of nursery dearth across China.

Large numbers of state-run preschools were expediently closed down during the 1990s economic reform and in their stead, a variety of for-profit private preschools sprung up across the country.

However, the incursion barely changes the dire unbalance between limited seats and mushrooming number of babies, even as China's family-planning policy remains. Media reports in June said that a 96-year-old woman in Beijing had to line up for nine days and eight nights in the summer heat in order to secure a seat at a preschool for her great granddaughter.

Adding to the complexity, the nursery market is on trend of accelerated polarization. News reports of wildly expensive preschools are increasing. One in southwestern Chengdu city stands out mostly for its nobleman-building golf classes, for five-year-olds. On the other end of the extreme, a video clip was posted online in early September showing an angry preschool teacher in eastern Xuzhou city beating a girl for over ten minutes, immediately sparking public outrage.

The CNR editorial suggested authorities should lower the threshold and facilitate the procedure of qualified private preschool entry into the market, to meet the growing demands from well-off families, while at the same time, allocate more public resources to public nurseries to provide indispensable accommodation to grass-root families.