Children from the local daycare center and elementary school students plant rice at a traditional rice planting event at the Yangjaecheon Rice Farming Learning Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, last month 27. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Two kinds of educational institutions for preschool children will be integrated as early as 2026, the Ministry of Education said Thursday, as part of efforts to narrow social disparities.
The government will come up with detailed procedures for the integration of kindergartens and child care centers, which have been separately supervised by the education and health ministries, respectively, by the end of this year, it said.
Child care centers usually accept children who are several months old to 5 years of age, while kindergartens usually accept children from 3 years old to around preschool age.
As the first move in preparation for the integration, the two organizations will be put under the supervision of the education ministry alone, beginning Thursday, due to the enforcement of the revised government organization law.
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 collecting 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 child care centers, the ministry said, adding 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 child care centers 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.
(Yonhap)
