The Ministry of Education (MOE) has proposed a NT$259.2 billion (US$8.35 billion) budget for the next fiscal year, NT$13.4 billion more than this year’s budget.
The biggest single item in the budget is for policies and programs aimed at countering the nation’s low birthrate: NT$35.2 billion, or 9.4 percent, an increase of NT$15.5 billion.
This includes NT$6.2 billion to cover the tuition-free policy; NT$5.1 billion for a plan to increase public and nonprofit kindergartens; NT$8.1 billion for an initiative to help private kindergartens transition into semi-public ones; and NT$15.8 billion to cover an increase in child-rearing subsidies to parents with children aged two to four, the ministry said.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
The NT$15.5 billion increase in the budget proposal would largely cover the increase in child-rearing subsidies, which are set to top NT$9 billion, K-12 Education Administration official Wu Hsiao-hsia (武曉霞) said on Saturday.
The number of private kindergartens participating in the initiative to become semi-public has also increased, she said.
Childcare Policy Association spokesman Wang Chao-ching (王兆慶) said that while data recorded in Germany suggest that increasing the coverage of kindergartens helps boost the birthrate, the alliance has received complaints about semi-public kindergartens cutting corners in their services by serving children poor food and cutting teachers’ salaries.
As the K-12 Education Administration caps the monthly tuition fee for semi-public institutions at NT$4,500, some kindergartens have moved recess time from 6pm to 4pm and charged parents a NT$2,000 “procrastination fee,” Wang said.
Parents have also complained about kindergartens raising the fee for shuttle bus services, he said.
The ministry needs to decide if it wants to increase public kindergartens or keep pushing private institutions to become semi-public before the initiative’s 2022 deadline, he said.
Early Childhood Education Association chairperson Ho Ming-te (何明德) said he has also heard about semi-public kindergartens charging “procrastination fees” and called on the ministry to investigate.
About 55 percent of children nationwide still go to private kindergartens, which means their parents would only receive NT$30,000 in subsidies from the ministry, 20 to 50 percent less than the sum given to parents whose children attend public kindergartens, Ho said.
This is evidence of a serious imbalance in the allocation of education resources, he said.
The ministry said that it would ask local education authorities to investigate whether any kindergartens in their areas illegally charge procrastination fees, and those doing so would have to stop immediately or risk being expelled from the initiative.
National Federation of Teachers’ Unions president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) said that ensuring quality preschool education is as essential as helping parents save money on child-rearing costs, but the semi-public kindergarten initiative is a money-wasting policy that does not necessarily help relieve parents’ financial pressures.
The government should concentrate on promoting public kindergartens until no lots need to be drawn for children to attend one, which would really be doing parents a favor, he said.
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