City to raise preschool subsidy

City to raise preschool subsidy

HCM CITY (VNS) — The HCM City People’s Council last Saturday approved a resolution to increase subsidies for preschool education, which will take effect on June 24.

The city will raise the allowance subsidy for management staff and teachers at public kindergartens to 60 per cent from the current 35 per cent.

Management staff and teachers who are in charge of classrooms with infants six-18 months old will receive an allowance subsidy of 70 per cent instead of 35 per cent.

In the upcoming 2014-2015 academic year, the city will allocate more than VND4 trillion (US$190.5 million) to build 1,198 classrooms for kindergarten children.

Also, the city will also allow kindergartens to admit children six-18 months old in eight districts only. Each of the districts has one or two kindergartens.

This policy will also be applied in the entire city in the following 2017-2018 school year.

Currently, the city has 18 public kindergartens that admit very young children..

The city has called on investors to build kindergartens, especially in industrial parks and export processing zones.

The city said it would offer tax exemptions on leased land for a five-year period.

Companies or individuals who build kindergartens will be provided 15-year, no-interest loans from the city’s stimulus fund, and be exempted from personal income tax. The city will also train their personnel.

At a meeting of the People’s Council held last Saturday, the vice chairman of People’s Committee, Hua Ngoc Thuan, reported that the city has 907 public and private kindergartens with 336,000 children.

Of those, 48.7 per cent of children are admitted at public kindergartens and the rest at private ones.

The city has 520 family-based childcare centres without licenses where 10,400 children attend. Of that figure, 39 admit children six-12 months old.

Six kindergartens exist in industrial parks and export processing zones.

The city has 18,544 kindergarten teachers, and the city estimates it needs 2,000 teachers to meet demand. — VNS

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