Bright prospects tipped for day care service providers

Day care services for children aged under 3 in China have excellent prospects for rapid development during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, experts have said.

He Dan, director of the China Population Development and Research Center, said sound development of day care services is likely during the five-year period, as predictions by the center have showed that an average of 2 million fewer children will be born each year during the period than during the previous five-year plan.

"This will create conditions for kindergartens to achieve a balance between preschool education (for children aged between 3 to 6) and day care services (for those under 3), as well as accelerating the establishment of a day care service system in the country," she said.

Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Education Research Institute, said an action plan released last year by the government of Shanghai set a goal of establishing at least 50 new day care centers each year from 2020 to 2022. The plan also said the Shanghai government will work to enable half of the kindergartens in the city to offer day care services by 2022.

Xiong said he is confident the city will achieve its goals, as many kindergartens across the country have unfilled seats this year-a situation that hasn't been encountered for years.

"Such a phenomenon occurred as the number of newborns in 2018(who are scheduled to start attending kindergartens this year) is lower than previous years," he said.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that a total of 15.23 million babies were born that year, marking a 2 million drop from 2017.

There were 14.65 million born in 2019 and 12 million last year, meaning kindergartens nationwide will have more vacancies in the following two years, Xiong said, adding that kindergartens can offer the vacancies to children under 3 in such circumstances.

Large gap

This is good news for many working parents, who have been looking for a qualified, economical place for their young children to stay and be attended to on weekdays before they turn 3 and go to kindergarten.

Wang Peian, executive vice-president of the China Family Planning Association, said the labor participation rate of women is high in China, leading to a great need for children's day care services, as mothers usually don't have enough time at home to take care of children.

Compared with the great demand, the supply of day care services is lagging far behind, and the imbalance between supply and demand is being exacerbated by the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, Wang added.

She Yu, a researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council, said the drop in the number of newborns in recent years was on one hand a result of the decreasing population of women of childbearing age.

"On the other, it reflected that couples were facing mounting pressure in raising children, including the lack of day care services," he said.

He said the shortage of day care services is particularly obvious among families in big cities, in impoverished rural areas, and among migrant and left-behind children.

He said a survey conducted in 2019 showed that only 5.6 percent of children under 3 nationwide went to day care centers. Even in Shanghai, which has led the development of day care services in the country, the proportion was no more than 15 percent-far below the average level among members of the Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development, which reached 34 percent in 2014.

Actions underway

To solve the problem, the State Council, China's Cabinet, released a series of guidelines in 2019, calling on social forces to provide day care services.

The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) also mentioned that residential communities in urban areas and capable employers should be encouraged to develop day care services for infants and young children.

Last year, a program offering 10,000 yuan ($1,560) to local governments as a subsidy for each new seat they added at a day care center was piloted in 290 cities of 27 provinces and regions, according to the National Health Commission's population surveillance and family development department.

She from the Development Research Center said there are also many things that can be done by governments, such as adding day care services to existing kindergartens, purchasing such services from private institutions, and providing more guidance on raising children to young parents.

Some areas have started to take action in this direction. Shanghai's Pudong district, for example, has opened 39 new publicly-funded day care centers since the beginning of the year, pushing the number of publicly-funded kindergartens that offer day care services in Shanghai to 200.

The Binjiang district of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, has promised to open day care centers to cover all its residential communities by the end of the year, charging no more than 2,500 yuan each month for each child.