The ruling People Power Party (PPP) and the government decided Friday to transfer the health ministry's responsibilities for early childhood care policy to the education ministry so as to improve policy efficiency.
Currently, responsibilities for South Korea's early childhood care policy are divided, with the health ministry handling policy for nurseries, where children under age 5 are taken care of, and the education ministry dealing with policy for kindergartens, where children aged between 3 and 5 are admitted.
Friday's decision to have the education ministry handle all early child care policy came in line with President Yoon Suk Yeol's call for the integration of the divided responsibilities in order to provide the "world's best level" of early childhood education and care.
Previous attempts to combine the two systems into one fell through amid heavy opposition from teachers. This is because in South Korea kindergarten teachers require a higher level of education and government credentials than teachers at nursery schools.
In contrast, parents have called for the integration. They say it will help narrow what they call an "education gap" between the two systems stemming from a difference in the education curriculum, government subsidies as well as the quality of facilities their children can access in the two schools.
On Friday, the PPP and the government said they will skip the public opinion gathering process and push forward with the integration.
"Those on the ground say that integrating preschools and nursery schools is a much more difficult task than unifying the two Koreas," the PPP's leader Kim Gi-hyeon said in the meeting with government officials.
"We must approach the integration ... with a strong sense of responsibility, as postponing it further due to political debates from adults is like committing crime against children," he said.
The PPP said it plans to make speedy revisions of related laws. It will also request the government to level out the quality of lunches and government subsidies provided to nursery schools to that of kindergartens by the end of the year with select regional education offices, the PPP's floor leader Park Dae-chul said.
Source: Yonhap News Agency
