Modelo tripartito de la ansiedad y depresión

The urban and rural area disparity can be seen in various aspects of early childhood

education development in China including the service accessibility, the ‘hardware’

environment (facilities and resources), and teachers’ development (staff training and

qualifications). For example, the preschool attendance in rural China was only 35.6%,

while the national average rate was 44.6% and the rate in urban China was 55.6% in

2007 (Pang, 2010). The three- years’ preschool attendance rate in rural China is

much lower than in urban area, and especially far less than some large cities such as

Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, which normally have preschool attendance

rates above 90%. Furthermore, even when children in rural China attended preschool

centres, the quality and environment of preschool education they experienced was

different from preschool education in urban China.

According to national education statistics reports between 2001 and 2012 (Ministry

of Education, 2001-2012), kindergarten teachers' qualifications were much lower in

rural areas than in urban areas. For example, in 2001, the majority of teachers in rural

area (84%) were high school graduates or below, while only the remaining small

proportion (16%) had associate degrees. In urban areas, however, more than 40% of

kindergarten teachers had associate degrees (39%) or undergraduate degrees (4%)

(Ministry of Education, 2001).

These urban and rural area disparities are still present although the gap has been

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undergraduate degree (20%) or associate degree (54%), while a quarter were high

school graduates (24%) or below high school (1%). However, in rural areas, half of

teachers were high school graduates (44%) or below high school (7%), while other

teachers mainly had an associate degree (42%) and few (7%) had an undergraduate

degree or graduate degree (<1%) (Ministry of Education, 2012).

According to the national education statistics report up to 2009, the rural preschool

centres had a less formal curriculum and inadequate learning and play materials (like

toys, story books, videos and so on) compared to counterparts in urban areas

(Ministry of Education, 2009). For example, in 2009, kindergartens in rural areas had

24,038,118 picture books in total and 3,163,450 tapes and videos which are usually

regarded as learning and teaching materials for children. Comparatively, urban

kindergartens had more than twice the amount of these materials (picture books:

42,538,583; videos and tapes: 6,444,553). Moreover, considering that the number of

kindergarten classrooms in rural areas in 2009 was more than that in urban areas

(rural: 389,299, urban: 227, 516) (Ministry of Education, 2009), the rural and urban

disparities in learning and teaching materials for children are even bigger.

As explained earlier, due to the ‘one child’ policy and the economic system reform, the number of public ECEC service programmes in China had been reduced

dramatically (Zhou, 2011). In the meantime, the number of private ECEC

programmes had increased phenomenally (see Appendix x). Also,

Overall, considering the urban and rural area disparities in public spending on ECEC,

the levels of staff qualifications and adequacy of learning resources for kindergarten

children, there is growing concern that the big gap between rural and urban areas in

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preschool education in China (Liu, Z. L., 2010c). This is of concern since preschool

education is now an integral part of the education system in China, which many

people believe should provide the basis for social equality through school and into

adulthood (Cai & Feng, 2004; Ye, 2010; Zhu & Zhang, 2006; Zhou, 2008).

Summary

This chapter reviews the development of early childhood education and care (ECEC)

in China in a historical context, in the contemporary context since the 1980s, and

looks at current development trends since 2010. It describes the ECEC development

in China through the lens of policies, the changes of kindergarten curriculum and

practices, as well as the problems and challenges alongside the development. Overall,

it is summarised that:

First, early childhood education and care in China is strongly influenced by the

social economic, political and cultural changes and it has been experiencing great

changes both in policy and practice, especially in the last three decades.

Second, China has made great strides in building the public and political profile of

ECEC and put great efforts recently in boosting preschool centre participation

nationwide. However, the public spending in ECEC development in China has been

kept at a low level and especially the funding responsibilities between central

government, provincial and local government in ECEC development are still not

clearly defined.

Third, there have been and remain great regional and social economic disparities in

development of ECEC in China. The development of ECEC in rural China is far

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accessibility, kindergarten facilities, resources and teachers education and so on.

How those disparities will influence children’s development in China is yet unclear but there is growing concern in China that these inequalities could lead to further

development gap in education and even social inequality.

Fourth, early childhood education and care development in less developed regions

and rural areas is one of the great challenges China facing at the moment. The policy

and public spending preferences in China nowadays are for expanding centre-based

preschool services in order to achieve the national goal. Little is known about the

quality of these centre-based preschool programmes and there is growing concern

that the programme quality cannot be maintained in expansion process.

Finally, it appears that the great societal interest in kindergarten has not been

matched by interest in child care or nurseries for 0 to 3 year olds. Policy

development for nurseries in China is relatively thin compared to the recent boom for

kindergarten. As the main interest in this study is children in kindergarten, the

development of childcare or nurseries services in China will not be discussed in more

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