[New Coronary Pneumonia] The government must examine the possible wave of kindergarten closures

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Written by: Commentary Editing Room

2020-08-19 06:15

The Education Association conducted a survey of all kindergarten principals in Hong Kong from the 7th to the 13th of this month. A total of 415 replies were received from school principals. About 80% said that some teachers had frozen pay or taken unpaid leave, or were even laid off. More than 20% of the schools stated that their fiscal reserves are only sufficient to maintain operation for three months, and 163 schools interviewed claimed that if the government does not introduce a new round of support, there will be a crisis of collapse.

The difficulty in operating kindergartens is mainly due to the drop-out wave. Kindergartens are not at the compulsory education stage, and distance learning is not suitable for early childhood education. Many parents do not intend to retain kindergarten places.

However, kindergartens can not only provide education for young children, but also share the pressure of parents to take care of children, and involve the livelihood of more than 10,000 practitioners. If a large number of kindergartens close down under the epidemic, the loss of talents and the shortage of degrees after the epidemic will bring about a crisis of supply of child care education.

Responding to dropouts with funding

Therefore, the government should deal with the drop-out wave to maintain kindergarten operations. Soon after the class suspension began in March, data showed that there was no dropout in subsidized kindergartens due to class suspension. Therefore, the Education Bureau can increase the amount of subsidy for students who have enrolled in full-time courses, so as to reduce the financial pressure of parents on their children's learning. For parents, this funding will also be earmarked for children to receive education in formal institutions.

If it is said that the Tuen Mun Hongguang International Kindergarten closed because of the excessive number of preschool N dropouts in March, it can still be regarded as a business self-financing problem, then this time many kindergartens have also dropped out of K classes and cannot be ignored. The authorities should take the initiative to understand the financial situation of each kindergarten and pay attention to it as soon as possible.

In the long run, the authorities should re-examine the early childhood education policy, including considering including them in free compulsory education and providing early childhood education with public funds. When kindergartens return from commercial service to public service, it is hoped that they will not be affected by temporary gains and losses, and can provide education to students and parents steadily.

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