Hundreds of thousands of kids head back to kindergarten, but many stay home

Hundreds of thousands of children aged 3-6 have returned to kindergartens, supervised daycares and private facilities after nearly two months at home amid the coronavirus pandemic, but hundreds of thousands more remained at home amid regulatory caps on class sizes and confusion.

Children at public kindergartens will attend in groups of no more than 18 and the majority will attend only three days a week so that the limits can be maintained, meaning that some 250,000 children will stay home for the first part of the week. The set days are rotated on a weekly basis on the grounds that many parents don’t work on Fridays.

The groups of 18 will in turn be divided into groups of no more than nine children, who will be strictly separated within the kindergarten. Parents are not allowed to enter kindergartens, with children met at the gate by staff and taken inside.

The Education Ministry has said that attendance is not compulsory.

Some private daycares have decided to postpone opening their gates due to what they see as Health Ministry guidelines that are too difficult to implement, and others have shut their doors for good after weeks of closure.

In addition, more than 250 private daycares that are members of the Private Kindergarten Association have announced that they will not open on Sunday due to disagreements over the outline proposed to them for compensation by the Treasury and the Labor Ministry, the Kan public broadcaster reports.

Some 40,000 children at government-supervised daycares will stay home for the foreseeable future because class sizes are limited to 17 without any rotation, with priority given to the most in need on the basis of the system used to determine entry.

Around 700 private daycares that are under national supervision will also not open today due to a disagreement with the Treasury, leaving around another 50,000 toddlers at home.