On April 26, the Ministry of Education (MOE) held a press conference to review the achievements made in preschool education since the convention of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012. This event is the first of a series of press conferences held by the MOE under the theme Education in China over the Past 10 Year. Lv Yugang, Director of the MOE’s Department of Basic Education, delivered an overview report on the occasion.
According to the report, resources for preschool education increased at a quick pace over the past 10 years. In 2021, there were a total of 295,000 kindergartens, an increase of 128,000 or 76.8% compared to 2011. The gross enrollment rate has seen a rapid and continuous growth and access to preschool education has been widely expanded: In 2021, the number of children attending kindergartens was 48.052 million, an increase of 13.808 million compared to 2011; the average gross enrollment rate nationwide increased from 62.3% in 2011 to 88.1% in 2021, an increase of 25.8 percentage points. The gap between urban and rural areas has been narrowed: the gross enrollment rate in the western and central part of China and rural areas has seen the fastest growth; about 80% of new kindergartens established in the last ten years were located in the western and central part of China, and about 60% in rural areas.
In 2021, there were 245,000 Puhui kindergartens (kindergartens charging affordable, government-regulated tuition) across the country, accounting for 83% of all kindergartens and marking an increase of 149.7 % compared to 2011. Among them 128,000 were public kindergartens. The number of children enrolled in Puhui kindergartens accounted for 87.8% of all preschool children across the country in 2021, up 20.5 percentage points from 2016, and this percentage stood as high as 90% in 12 provinces. The coverage rate of Puhui kindergartens in rural areas reached 90.6%: almost every township/county had at least one public-run central kindergarten, every large village had at least a kindergarten and smaller villages shared kindergartens.
Over the past decade, efforts have been made to promote scientifically-supported care-giving and education practices in kindergartens and families. A series of guidance documents and evaluation standards have been published, which provide clear and effective guidance for the development of preschool education. Successful practices like Anji Play have been spread to many schools, and play-based preschool activities have been widely adopted in kindergarten curriculum.
The past decade has seen a continuous growth in financial support for preschool institutions. In 2020, the country’s government expenditure on preschool education was 253.2 billion RMB, 6 times as much as that in 2011 (41.6 billion RMB) . In a broader picture, the country’s education spending accounted for 5.9% of GDP in 2020, up from 2.2% in 2011. Over the past 10 years, the central government has invested over 170 billion RMB to support preschool education. From 2012 to 2021, government spending at all levels for preschool education totaled 75.2 billion RMB, which helped 62.32 million children from economically disadvantaged families.
