The Study of Public-Private Partnerships on Early Childhood Education and Care: Focusing on Non-Profit Preschool

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The paper explores the issues of theoretical foundation and types of public-private partnerships, early childhood education and caring system and policy under the framework of the Early Childhood Education and Care Act (simply referred to as “Child Care Act,” hereinafter), as well as operation and practice of non-profit preschool.There is different classification for public-private partnerships. In accordance with the classification inthe Act for Promotion of Private Participation in Infrastructure Projects, the nature of non-profit preschool is closer to the kind of “build-operate” (BO). In accordance with the classification of Professor Chen-Jung Chan, the nature of non-profit preschool belongs to “commission of business” under administrative entrusting. In accordance with the classification of Professor Ming-Shiu Cheng, the nature of non-profit preschool belongs to the kind of “design-build-operate” (DBO), with the public kindergartens under private management. As confirmed in Child Care Act, promotion and facilitation of the development of early childhood education and care service are the responsibilities of the government, society, families, preschools, and early childhood education and care service workers. The government should provide children with excellent, popularized, inexpensive, accessible and convenient education and care service. Early childhoodeducation and care service system is divided into preschool, community mutual-aid care and after-school care, which are offered at the same time. The government strongly promotes non-profit preschools,which provide a kind of early childhood education and care service with charges asinexpensive as public preschools’ and with service as good as private preschools’. The policy of turning childcare service to be public service has urged preschools and nurseries to become institutions so as for their operation to meet the safety and health regulations and Child Care Act and follow the related systems. The ecology of early childhood education should be developed in a fair and sensible direction. The rights, benefits and income of the related personnel should be protected. The main predicaments of the operators of non-profit preschools are: the persons-in-charge of the sites might not have sustainable policies and positioning direction; the administrative and financial checks are complicated and tedious; and it is not easy to invest and employ suitable manpower. This is why those people involved find the operation quite difficult. In future the government should keep on working hard to make improvement in the following issues: insufficient public nurseries, imbalanced proportion of public and private kindergartens, qualitative and quantitative deficiency of childhood education and care workers, commercialization of childhood education and care contents, and integration of teachers’ education.