CRI听力:Rural Kids Face Big Obstacles to Attend Kindergarten

In a remote village, about 250 kilometers away from Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province, there are 174 children are under 6-years-old, however, none of them is in kindergarten.

Most children in the village are playing in the farmland, without any toys or books. All they have at hand are mud and crushed stones.

Their parents say they are too busy to talk or play with their kids during the day, as they spend most of their time doing farm work in the field. He Yongzai is one of these parents. He says he has three children, and the youngest son is 3-years-old. However, none of them has ever received any early childhood education.

"None of them has a chance to go to kindergarten because there is none here."

The county where the village is located has only one privately funded kindergarten, which may only accommodates 100 children. However, there are more than 3,000 kindergarten-aged children across the county. In other words, only 1 out of 30 children have the chance to attend kindergarten.

There are still other impediments. First, long distance stops these children from going to kindergarten. With a distance of about 40 kilometers between the village and the kindergarten, it takes children at least two hours to travel between home and the school.

Second, high costs are an obstacle for early childhood education. A one-way coach ticket from the village to the kindergarten costs about 15 to 20 yuan and most parents say they can't afford it because their average annual income is only about 1,000 yuan. Plus, the tuition fee required by the kindergarten is 600 yuan a year.

Many parents in the rural west region say although an annual tuition of 600 yuan is not a big deal for parents in cities, they can't afford it. Here is a mother in a remote village in Qinghai Province.

"Our family is really financially difficult. My husband doesn't earn much, so I wish the tuition fee for the kindergarten was cheaper. I think I could afford if it cost 50 to 60 yuan a term (100 or 120 yuan a year)".

Fifty six-year-old Nan Jie lives in Hezhuang village in Qinghai Province. He says many children at 4 to 5 years old in the village haven't even learned how to count. And some of these children have to spend two to three years getting used to school life after entering primary school.

Nan has been taking care of his two grandsons at home, and his younger grandson is 4- years-old. All he wants now is to have a kindergarten in his village.

"The reason so many people in the village are illiterate, is because they did not receive any systematic childhood education. Children in cities are already in primary school at 5- or 6-years-old. We can not catch up with them."

Nan Jie believes if children in rural areas receive education earlier, they can become more talented when they grow up.

For CRI, I am Zhang Wan.