Early childhood education and care

This chapter presents thematic analysis of education in post-Mao China at the earliest phase of formal instruction outside the home: early childhood education and care (ECEC). It traces major shifts in ECEC policy and practice, with some reference to the pre-Reform period as well as to the years since 1978. Reform to the danwei-based system for funding and administering ECEC was not seriously countenanced in the early 1980s, although the transfer of responsibility for ECEC policy from the Ministry of Health to the Education Ministry signalled the heightened emphasis on its educative role. The increased emphasis on the educational, as distinct from the childcare, role of preschools was reflected in official efforts to promote a professionalisation and standardisation of ECEC practice. Separate guidelines were issued for urban kindergartens and their rural counterparts. The emphasis in state policy on bringing women into the workforce influenced arrangements for financing and staffing kindergartens.