Author(s)

Lu Yin, Shuiping Ye

Corresponding Author

Lu Yin

Abstract

At present, private kindergartens play an important role in supporting the development of preschool education. The popularity of private kindergartens could provide more opportunities for preschoolers to access to early childhood education. The government purchasing services could effectively integrate the existing educational resources between public and private kindergartens, and dramatically overcome the difficulty of shortage of preschool educational resources. This research, taking the government purchasing of preschool education services as its perspectives, focuses on the risks and problems faced in the practice of government purchasing services in Southwestern China’s Sichuan province. It is proposed that the local government should build an effectively administrative environment, refine the contents and methods of services, take multiple measures simultaneously and improve the assessment and supervision mechanism. With the implementation of the universal two-child policy in China, the number and structure of the population have changed. A large number of emerged preschoolers pose a challenge to preschool education services. [1] In 2018, the registered number of children in China’s private kindergartens accounted for 56.69% of the total number of children in China’s kindergartens, and the number of private kindergartens took up 62.17% of the whole number of kindergartens nationwide.[2] Private kindergartens play an important role in popularizing early childhood education. Only when the government supports private kindergartens development, and gradually forms a good situation of coordinated development between public and private kindergartens, most of preschool children would have access to preschool education. To a large extent, government purchasing services can effectively integrate the high-quality education resources of public and private nursery schools and solve the difficulty of shortage of preschool education services. Government purchasing of preschool education services refers to that the government has transformed its function from directly running kindergartens to purchasing preschool education services, through qualified social organizations or individuals, assessing and funding based on the quality and quantity of services provided. [3] From the perspectives of government purchasing of preschool education services, this research analyzes the risks faced in the practice of Southwestern China’s Sichuan Province, and puts forward the corresponding countermeasures and ideas.

Keywords

Government Purchasing Service; Preschool Education; Private Kindergarten