SEOUL: The Republic of Korea will integrate two kinds of educational institutions for preschool children as early as 2026, the Ministry of Education said Thursday, as part of the efforts to narrow social disparities.
The government will come up with detailed procedures for the integration of kindergartens and childcare centres by the end of this year, Korean news agency Yonhap reported. At the moment education and health ministries are separately supervising the kindergarten and childcare centres respectively.
Childcare centres usually accept children who are aged several months to 5 years, while kindergartens usually accept children from 3 years old to around preschool age. As the first move in preparation for the integration, the two organisations will be put under the supervision of the education ministry alone, beginning Thursday, due to the enforcement of the revised government organisation law.
New third institution
In the next step, the ministry said it plans to create a third institution that will
merge the two, noting that the new entity may be called either “infants and young children school” or “young children school.” It will push for the enactment of the integration law next year after taking public opinions on the merger.
If the law passes the National Assembly in 2025, the integrated institution will be created as early as 2026. By 2027, there will be about 3,100 pilot integrated institutions, which are approximately 10 percent of kindergartens and childcare centres, the ministry said. It added that all infants and young children will be allowed to use the pilot institutions for up to 12 hours a day.
In addition, the teacher-to-infant ratio for infants under 1-year-old at childcare centres will be lowered from the current 1-to-3 to 1-to-2, the ministry said.
Free education, which is currently applied to infants under 2 years old, will gradually be expanded to 3- to 5-year-olds by 2027, it said, making all preschool children eligible for free education and child care by then.
Source: Emirate
s News Agency