By She Yu, Research Department of Social Development, DRC; Hong Xiumin, Zhu Wenting & Zhang Mingzhu, Beijing Normal University

Research Report, No.127, 2021 (Total 6192) 2021-5-19

Abstract: Public kindergartens set up by the government are dedicated to offering services to the public in a fair and inclusive fashion and are the main channel in meeting the basic needs of the public, serving as the bottom line, leading the development directions and ensuring that the relevant fees are charged within the proper range, which also underpins the solutions to alleviating the people’s difficulties in kindergarten enrollment and reducing their expenditure of the charges. At present, the development of public kindergartens is still faced with numerous problems and challenges which are manifested as follows. First, mechanisms are needed to ensure further input and stable fiscal funding support. Second, the strict constraints on the official employment quotas in the fast development is yet to be resolved. Third, the treatment guarantees for teachers vary among permanent and temporary/contracted posts, which needs to be reformed to stabilize the personnel team. Forth, the input and regulation mechanisms for the public kindergartens calls for clearer definition; otherwise it hinders the sustainable development for these institutions. To this end, this paper has offered the following policy options. First, the roles of public kindergartens need to be correctly understood so that their scale and layout could be arranged properly. Second, stable long-term mechanisms for constant fiscal input need to be established to flesh out the supporting fiscal system for public kindergartens. Third, multiple measures are needed to comprehensively improve the treatment for teachers working for public kindergartens. Forth, the status of public kindergartens need to be clearly defined and the corresponding supporting system needs to be established. Fifth, the essential construction of public kindergartens needs to be strengthened so as to provide a good pattern for the sound development of preschool education.

Keywords: public kindergarten, sustainable development, long-term mechanism, preschool education