Children attend a dance class at a kindergarten in Huangyuan County, Xining, Qinghai Province. Photo: XINHUA

China has established a well-developed public service system for preschool education. By 2023, the gross enrollment rate for preschool education reached 91.1%, with a total of 274,400 kindergartens. Of these, 236,400 were public kindergartens, making up 86.16% of the national total.

Despite rising gross enrollment rates and the widening coverage of kindergartens, population dynamics and urbanization have posed new challenges to the resource structure and layout for preschool education, making universal, inclusive, safe, and high-quality preschool education a daunting task. The fundamental challenge lies in the supply side, rather than the demand side, of this sector. Education is a pivotal public good concerned with the people’s wellbeing. Providing high-quality preschool education for the people is a key aspect of supply-side reform in this field.

The dynamics of the school-age population are closely related to the supply-side reform of preschool education. In recent years, China’s population has registered negative growth following a small peak, adding uncertainties to education supply. Based on this trend, supply-side reform of preschool education should proceed in the following four respects.

Quantity of preschools

To adapt to the new trend of negative demographic growth and changes in the population’s spatial structure, supply-side reform of preschool education should first be conducted to quantity. It is essential to rationally increase preschool education institutions based on the number of preschool-age children. In particular, more preschools should be established in densely populated regions and rural areas of western China to gradually narrow the gap with eastern regions and urban areas, thereby achieving balanced development of preschool education.

Second, attention should be paid to the supply of preschool education resources to metropolitan areas of developed cities in order to create growth poles for regional economic development. Given the generally tight supply of preschool resources in China, developed cities, in particular, are bothered by short supply due to population inflow, facing a more pronounced supply-demand mismatch. Therefore, it is vital to augment preschool education supply based on the special needs of metropolitan areas in developed cities to fully leverage their siphon effect, engaging more capable young men and high-caliber innovative talent to work in these cities, in order to boost the cities’ innovation momentum and accelerate their industrial upgrade.

Also, it is necessary to dynamically adjust the spatial layout of preschool institutions in light of projections regarding China’s future population. With the second-child policy, the preschool-age population grew drastically in 2019 and peaked in 2021. However, it is expected to decline after 2035 as the effect of the second-child policy weakens. Before 2021, public policy focused on moderately increasing the number of preschools and enhancing their accommodative capacity. After 2035, transformation plans should be developed for kindergartens, to turn them into nursing and caregiving institutions for children younger than 3 years old. The aim is to align the spatial layout of preschool education facilities with the spatial distribution of the population, avoiding waste of education resources.

Teacher workforce

Building a stable, professional teacher workforce is fundamental to ensuring the quality of preschool education. From the perspective of human resources, supply-side reform should start by striking a balance between urban and rural areas in terms of kindergarten teachers. In Chinese cities and the countryside, the teaching workforce at kindergartens differs significantly in quantity and quality. Compared to urban areas, rural kindergartens have long been plagued by a shortage of teachers, low levels of professionalism, and brain drain.

Balanced development of preschool education requires sufficient staffing for rural kindergartens. It is practical to, in accordance with the demand for kindergartens in rural areas, allocate teachers from cities to support preschool education in the countryside, so as to equalize human resources. Additionally, laws and regulations on preschool education should be promulgated as soon as possible to clarify the status of kindergarten teachers. Teachers in rural kindergartens, in particular, deserve better treatment. Policies like granting them extra allowances and housing preferences, and offering sufficient training and promotion opportunities are advised to attract and retain talent.

Moreover, the threshold for admitting kindergarten teachers should be raised. At present, China is still implementing the degree requirement stipulated by the Teachers Law enacted in 1993, demanding graduates from kindergarten-teacher training schools and above. Consequently, the current workforce of kindergarten teachers is not highly educated, and some are not professionally suited for this type of work.

As the quality of education is improving in China, the current hiring criteria for preschool educators have been inadequate. Colleges and universities should be encouraged to offer an undergraduate major in preschool education or early childhood education to cultivate highly educated and high-caliber talent for preschools. During recruitment, the new hiring criteria should be strictly followed to ensure the quality and professionalism of kindergarten teachers.

Additionally, comprehensive measures should be implemented to promote the career development of kindergarten teachers. First, it is essential to establish an institutionalized training system, particularly one that provides ample training opportunities for teachers in rural and private-run kindergartens. A comprehensive support system is likewise necessary to support kindergarten teachers’ autonomous development, self-reflection, and lifelong learning, continuously advancing their professional levels.

Public spending

Abundant financial support will lay a solid foundation for the healthy development of China’s preschool education sector. To carry out supply-side financial reform of preschool education, public spending in this sector should be increased. Studies of educational economics show that preschool education, though competitive and exclusive, boasts high societal returns and positive externalities, so many countries around the world invest heavily in this field. In countries with gross preschool enrollment rates ranging from 60% to 80%, expenditure for preschool education accounted for 7.73% of public finance. In China, the gross enrollment rate stood at 79.6% in 2017, but the ratio of public spending in preschool education was only 4.2%.

To turn this situation around, it is recommended to build a preschool education financial investment system including governments at the central, provincial, and municipal levels, pooling all government financial resources to steadily increase investment in preschool education.

Furthermore, financial investment structures should be optimized to tilt towards lesser-developed regions, the countryside, as well as old revolutionary base areas, autonomous regions for ethnic minorities, and border areas. These areas fall shorter of funds for preschool education, as the overall educational spending is sub-par. To reach a balance, it is crucial to designate a special fund for the development of preschool education in lesser-developed regions, increase financial support to public kindergartens in these disadvantaged areas, and build a funding system for preschool-age students from low-income families to ensure equal access to preschool education.

Systems

Systems are external conditions for the sound development of preschool education. Robust systems will effectively facilitate supply-side reform in this field. It is imperative to construct a diverse preschool education system. By 2020, the problem of “difficult access to kindergartens” had basically been solved. Thereafter, quality improvement has become the primary task for preschool education to meet the people’s demand for mid- and high-end kindergartens. In this context, a dual structure that incorporates both affordable and high-end kindergartens should be developed to harmonize the development of these institutions, as well as public and private preschools. While maintaining the proportion of affordable kindergartens, the diversity of preschool education options can be expanded to include high-end kindergartens, small and micro kindergartens, and private kindergartens.

Public kindergartens should prioritize affordability and universality to secure the people’s livelihood and satisfy their basic demands for preschool education. Conversely, private and high-end kindergartens should pay attention to diversity and distinctiveness to meet different groups’ educational needs.

Vigorous efforts should be made to develop affordable kindergartens and further boost the gross enrollment rate of preschool education, while reasonably setting subsidy standards for these kindergartens. If the government grants affordable kindergartens low subsidies and imposes restrictions on their tuition, these preschools will reduce their investments, leading to low-quality education. Thus, subsidies should be raised to guarantee that school conditions improve alongside teachers’ professional levels.

High-quality early childhood education is key to the modernization of the Chinese education system. It is essential to scientifically forecast trends of preschool-age population change and comprehensively consider natural, economic, and demographic distribution in different regions. “Addition” and “subtraction” of related policies, present and long-term interests, and the intensity and pace of supply-side reform should be balanced to meet different resource needs across regions, thereby ensuring the high-quality development of preschool education.

Sun Baicai is a professor and dean of the Normal College at Qingdao University. Wang Xinjun is an associate professor from the College of Education at Lanzhou City University.