유치원·어린이집 운영 실태 비교 및 요구 분석

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the current status of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in kindergartens and childcare facilities of Korea by performing a nationwide survey. While this kind of survey has been carried out every three years in the sector of childcare, it has been ten years since the last survey done for the sector of education. This study also attempted to examine differences between the two sectors(i.e.kindergartens and childcare facilities) by analyzing the results of the survey, which could be an effort to find out ideas to compromise the dissimilarities between the two if we consider the viewpoint of integration of child care and education. 1,155 of directors and 1,692 teachers participated in the survey. The questions are related to the current status of buildings, children, teachers, staffs, tuition, curriculum, extra curriculum activities, daily-weekly-monthly program plans, needs, and other issues concerning the management of kindergartens and childcare facilities. In addition to the survey, we held meetings with directors and teachers in ECEC sector to discuss the current problems that should be considered deeply in order to improve the quality of ECEC. For the development of ECEC policies, some suggestions were made based on the results of the surveys and meetings: a) to reduce discrepancy in tuition and other costs between private and public kindergartens, re-coordination of subsidy system and measures to control tuition rate increase are required. B) to improve work conditions of teachers, maternity leaves need to be guaranteed by hiring more substitute teachers. Providing more spacious offices to teachers is also required. c) to allow childcare facilities hire more assistant teachers and staffs, utilization of government financial supports is necessary(labor costs, etc.).