Seoul City to Reduce Childcare Teacher-to-Child Ratio from July... Pilot Operation at 110 Centers

Reducing Workload for Childcare Teachers: '0-Year-Old Class' from 3 to 2, '3-Year-Old Class' from 15 to 10
Carefully Selected Daycare Centers with Excellent Childcare Environment, 110 New Teachers Hired for Pilot Classes with Full City Funding Support

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] Starting in July, the Seoul Metropolitan Government will begin a pilot program to reduce the teacher-to-child ratio at 110 public and national daycare centers across Seoul. In the pilot daycare centers, the ratio for the "0-year-old class" will be reduced from 3 children per teacher to 2, and for the "3-year-old class," from 15 children to 10 or fewer, which is expected to reduce the workload of childcare teachers and improve the quality of care.

On the 27th, Seoul announced that it had selected 110 daycare centers through district-level screening and recommendations to implement the "reduction of teacher-to-child ratio," which has been the top priority demand from parents using daycare centers and childcare teachers. Preparations, including hiring childcare teachers for the pilot classes, have been completed, and full-scale pilot operations will begin in July.

As the first metropolitan government to operate such a pilot project, Seoul will invest a total budget of 5.2 billion KRW until the end of next year (1.7 billion KRW in 2021 and 3.5 billion KRW in 2022) to fully cover the salaries of newly hired childcare teachers for the pilot classes with city funds.

The selected pilot daycare centers have secured sufficient activity space by providing a dedicated childcare room area of at least 2.64㎡ per child, which is stricter than the legal standard. In particular, the 3-year-old classes, which normally have a capacity of 15 children per class, will be organized with 7 to 10 children to create an ideal childcare environment.

Seoul will also conduct monitoring to measure the outcomes and analyze the effects of the pilot project. The monitoring will include quantitative surveys such as questionnaires comparing before and after the pilot implementation, in-depth interviews with teachers and caregivers, behavioral characteristic observations of infants and toddlers by experts, and qualitative research such as Photovoice, which compares visual image changes before and after.

Based on the effect analysis of this pilot project, Seoul plans to expand the program to include private and home daycare centers next year. Additionally, to ensure the successful establishment of the "teacher-to-child ratio improvement" project, Seoul will continuously request the central government to support salary standards for pilot class teachers and to relax the staffing standards for childcare workers.

Kang Hee-eun, Seoul’s Childcare Officer, stated, "We will strive for the successful operation of this pilot project to create a safe childcare environment for infants and toddlers and improve working conditions for childcare teachers." She added, "We will continue to do our best to promote demand-centered childcare policies befitting Seoul’s status as a childcare-specialized city."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.