Hardly any places for two-year-olds: Devastating lack of campus space in Germany

Despite investments by federal and state governments in the expansion of day-care centers, finding a day-care center for under-three-year-olds is often difficult. In Germany, 273,000 places are still missing for this age group, as the "Welt am Sonntag" reports, citing numbers from the Institute of German Business (IW) in Cologne. This corresponds to a care gap of 11.6 percent.

The Kitaplatzmangel has thus decreased only slightly. In 2017, according to the report, 279,000 daycare rates were still missing for under three year olds, which corresponded to a gap of 12.1 percent.

As a reason that the gap has barely narrowed, rising birth and immigrant numbers are mentioned. In addition, there are more and more parents who wish for a Kitaplatz for their child.

"Local governments need to be prepared to provide care for all children two years and older in ten years," said IW family policy expert Wido Geis-Thöne of the newspaper. Since August 2013, children from the age of one have nationwide entitlement to a publicly funded childcare place.

Gap could get bigger

Experts fear that the supply gap will increase over the next few years due to the lack of educators. The family policy spokesman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group, Marcus Weinberg, demanded in the "Welt am Sonntag" that the recruitment of new skilled workers should be understood as a "national task".

The Federal Statistical Office had also recently reported that more and more parents send their toddlers in a day care center: 789.600 children under three years visited therefore according to the deadline 1 March 2018 in Germany a day care facility. This is around 27,200 more than at the same time last year. According to the statisticians, at the beginning of March there were 55,933 day care facilities nationwide, 640 more than at the same time last year.

Among the under-three-year-olds, according to the statistics office, especially two-year-olds are cared for in a day-care center: in March 2018, just under 63 percent of them visited a day-care center.

In the Bundestag is currently a "good-Kita law" advise. This should make Germany's day-care centers better and free for low-income earners. By 2022 5.5 billion euros will flow from the federal government to the federal states. The Ministry of Family wants to record with the countries in individual agreements how the funds are used.