Kindergartners learn in 'cramped' apartment

• Source: Global Times
• [10:05 June 13 2010]
• Comments

Some 20 children sit in a classroom Saturday at Baby Kindergarten, which is housed in a Baoshan district apartment. Photo: Chen Xiaoru

By Chen Xiaoru

A private kindergarten in northern Baoshan district for children, which does not require kids to hold a Shanghai hukou, or permanent residency for enrollment, is receiving complaints from neighbors worried about the conditions being provided to the kids.

A group of residents in the Shangda Jufeng Garden compound have filed complaints with their neighborhood committee about the conditions are also upset by the loud noise coming from the kids playing at Baby Kindergarten, which is housed in one of the residential apartments.

Families living nearby in the remote suburban community said that too many children, aged 3 to 5, are being cramped into tiny quarters, while the kids are also subject to poor hygiene practices.

When this Global Times reporter walked in assuming the role of a parent interested in sending a child to the school, there were more than 20 students in a room that is no more than 20 square meters in size.

With the windows closed and empty bottles and quilts piled in the corner, the scent of sweat and urine lingers in the three rooms.

Three-year-olds take naps on wooden boards, while the older kids sleep at their desks.

A woman surnamed Chen, whose grandson attends the school, said the kids are brought outside when it is sunny.

She added that the family prefers to send their child to a better school, but the 300- yuan ($44) monthly fee, which includes lunch for her grandson every day, is all her family from Anhui Province, without a Shanghai hukou, can afford.

According to Chen, the majority of the kids enrolled are children of migrant workers, who also cannot afford the price of private kindergartens, which on average charge over 1,000 yuan ($146) per month.

The neighborhood committee, which does not have the authority to force the kindergarten to shut down, or move out, said that it is aware the kindergarten offers inadequate service to the some 60 children enrolled.

She also admitted that several residents living close by have complained about noise from the children who laugh and play loudly every day.

"We go to the kindergarten once a week to ask them to leave, but the owner never listens to us," the Party secretary of the neighborhood committee, who declined to disclose her identity, told the Global Times Saturday.