보육시설과 유치원 이용시간 유형별 비용 차등 적용 방안

Abstract

Under the current education system, childcare programs are universally provided on a full-time basis, and this has become more widely extended to include night-time care, and 24-hour care services. Additionally, kindergartens for young children have been offering more extensive time frames, from the half-time services to extended services and an 8-hour full-time system. However, even such extended services cannot meet the various needs of parents who are faced with widely varying circumstances. As for childcare, operating hours are currently set to 12 hours in principle, therefore, most national/public childcare facilities that are faithfully complying with government policy are running their facilities based on legal operating hours, with the result that even children who don’t need full-time programs have to stay late. In reality, 23.0% of infants and 22.9% of young children are leaving childcare facilities by 3:00 PM, and 17.9% of infants and 22.7% of young children stay in childcare facilities until 6:00 PM. These phenomena have resulted from the ways that the current policy was implemented and practiced, in which priority was weighted to the provider instead of the consumer, and towards quantitative expansion rather than efficiency. This research is intended to suggest ways to estimate the appropriate cost for providing childcare and early educational services to prepare support measures by understanding how consumers use early childhood services and how much they pay for services based on the scheduling system of the service providers. The following are the specific research areas and methods. First, on-site research was conducted to gain information about operating hours, scheduling systems under which parents can choose the service hours, and the childcare and education service fees according to the scheduling system. Second, a detailed case analysis of foreign contexts where the scale of tuition fees for childcare facilities and kindergartens are differently applied according to the characteristics of consumers was conducted. Since the working status of a mother is considered one of the most important factors, the focus of the analysis was given to cases with different scales of tuition fees according to the mother's working status. Third, scenarios were created according to service scheduling types, based on which the appropriate amount of child care fees and kindergarten tuitions were estimated. These estimations were made on the basis of the government funded unit cost, in consideration of general working environments such as the legal regulations of the early childhood workforce, and the application of assistant teacher systems, as well as the current legal standards. Fourth, according to the results of reviewing these scenarios by service scheduling types, applicable scheduling types to be used in childcare facilities and kindergartens were suggested and relevant policy issues and practices were addressed.