Kindergarten costs more than college - if you can get a place
The Christian Science Monitor in Beijing 26 February 2010
Beijing residents are finding it costs more to send children to kindergarten than to put them through college.
As outsiders pour into the capital looking for work and parents try to give their offspring an ever-earlier competitive advantage, scarce preschool places are commanding record fees.
“There are just too many kids and too few kindergartens,” Li Jia, a sales manager at a lingerie company, said.
Her husband, Xing Jun, said: “The private ones are too expensive and it’s really hard to get into a public one. I did not expect this when my son was born.”
It is almost impossible, according to parents and teachers, to find a reputable kindergarten in Beijing that charges less than 1,000 yuan (HK$1,135) a month, which is a quarter of an average salary in the capital. Some charge five times that, putting intense strain on the budgets of even richer young parents already burdened by heavy mortgages.
By comparison, tuition and accommodation at Peking University only costs about 700 yuan a month, thanks to government subsidies.
Beijing education authorities are struggling to meet the rising demand. They have increased class sizes this year to 40 children, up from 35, and added classrooms for 12,000 more places, according to the municipal Education Department. There are plans to add another 12,000.
But even that will leave 250,000 kindergarten-age children in Beijing - more than half the total - without places, according to a recent report by the Beijing Academy of Educational Science.
The pressure on kindergartens is particularly heavy now because children born in 2007 are approaching preschool age. Beijing’s birthrate soared in 2007 - an especially auspicious year in the Chinese calendar.
All this means that poorer Beijingers are forced to fall back on the traditional childcare solution in China - the grandparents - since in most families both parents work.
Lu Qi, a 32-year-old technical manager at a BluRay DVD manufacturer, began in June to look for a kindergarten that would take his son, now two years old, in September this year.
“If other parents send their children to preschool and you don’t, your child won’t have any playmates,” he said. “Parents don’t want their kids to lose right from the starting line. If just one family sends his kid to kindergarten, everybody will.”
Li said: “If they don’t mix, they won’t learn to communicate properly. We want our boy to learn social skills in kindergarten.”
Hao Jianqiu, headmistress of Donghuamen kindergarten near the Forbidden City, said: “Parents are definitely paying more attention nowadays to preschool. Their children carry the whole family’s hopes on their shoulders. If their education is a failure, the family fails ... it puts huge pressure on the children.”
It is common for three-year-olds in Beijing kindergartens to learn English, and not unusual for them to take after-school classes in music, martial arts or chess, which cost extra.
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Kindergarten costs more than college - if you can get a place
The Christian Science Monitor in Beijing
26 February 2010
Beijing residents are finding it costs more to send children to kindergarten than to put them through college.
As outsiders pour into the capital looking for work and parents try to give their offspring an ever-earlier competitive advantage, scarce preschool places are commanding record fees.
“There are just too many kids and too few kindergartens,” Li Jia, a sales manager at a lingerie company, said.
Her husband, Xing Jun, said: “The private ones are too expensive and it’s really hard to get into a public one. I did not expect this when my son was born.”
It is almost impossible, according to parents and teachers, to find a reputable kindergarten in Beijing that charges less than 1,000 yuan (HK$1,135) a month, which is a quarter of an average salary in the capital. Some charge five times that, putting intense strain on the budgets of even richer young parents already burdened by heavy mortgages.
By comparison, tuition and accommodation at Peking University only costs about 700 yuan a month, thanks to government subsidies.
Beijing education authorities are struggling to meet the rising demand. They have increased class sizes this year to 40 children, up from 35, and added classrooms for 12,000 more places, according to the municipal Education Department. There are plans to add another 12,000.
But even that will leave 250,000 kindergarten-age children in Beijing - more than half the total - without places, according to a recent report by the Beijing Academy of Educational Science.
The pressure on kindergartens is particularly heavy now because children born in 2007 are approaching preschool age. Beijing’s birthrate soared in 2007 - an especially auspicious year in the Chinese calendar.
All this means that poorer Beijingers are forced to fall back on the traditional childcare solution in China - the grandparents - since in most families both parents work.
Lu Qi, a 32-year-old technical manager at a BluRay DVD manufacturer, began in June to look for a kindergarten that would take his son, now two years old, in September this year.
“If other parents send their children to preschool and you don’t, your child won’t have any playmates,” he said. “Parents don’t want their kids to lose right from the starting line. If just one family sends his kid to kindergarten, everybody will.”
Li said: “If they don’t mix, they won’t learn to communicate properly. We want our boy to learn social skills in kindergarten.”
Hao Jianqiu, headmistress of Donghuamen kindergarten near the Forbidden City, said: “Parents are definitely paying more attention nowadays to preschool. Their children carry the whole family’s hopes on their shoulders. If their education is a failure, the family fails ... it puts huge pressure on the children.”
It is common for three-year-olds in Beijing kindergartens to learn English, and not unusual for them to take after-school classes in music, martial arts or chess, which cost extra.
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