Newsweek 丨 "Mythical Beasts" return, is there a market for summer nursery schools that do not cost money?
Now the summer vacation of primary and secondary schools in various places has begun, which means that for one family after another, the beast has returned.
Who will take care of the children has always been a problem during the long summer vacation.
This year, for many parents, the summer custody class has become the hottest word. Not long ago, even the Ministry of Education issued the "Notice on Supporting the Exploration and Development of Summer Custody Services."
The notice stated that local education departments should proceed from reality and encourage qualified schools to actively undertake the work of student summer custody services.
This is of course a good thing, but on the one hand, how can a good thing be done?
On the other hand, if it is a good thing, will parents send their children to summer care classes?
Newsweek’s attention this week:
summer custody class
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1
Back to school for summer vacation
Li Zimeng, a
student at Haishu Central Primary School in Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province
: My name is Li Zimeng, and I will be in the fifth grade next semester.
I usually attend some training classes arranged by my mom and dad. When I have time, I go to the library to read.
I was very surprised to have such a summer nursery school this year. I also experienced this summer nursery with some students in our class today.
In the morning of Friday (16th), Li Zimeng and his friends returned to school to experience a half-day of summer trusteeship life.
This is the Ningbo Haishu Central Primary School where she is studying. The school has a summer nursery school, which not only makes Li Zimeng feel fresh, but also the first time teachers have participated in the preparation.
During this half-day, the school arranged for students to study traditional culture courses on campus, and they would also go to the Yuehu Scenic Area across the street to conduct off-campus art sketching classes.
In the course of "Discovering the Beauty of Ningbo", the art teacher spent 40 minutes for the students to experience the beauty of ancient buildings, and another 20 minutes for everyone to draw a corner of the building they were interested in.
In such an art class immersed in historical buildings, there are no restrictions on the venue and class time, and students can also focus on what they like according to their own preferences.
Li Zimeng, a student from Haishu Central Primary School in Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province
: Because of the summer vacation, as I said, either doing homework at home or attending a training class. A class is 40 minutes, and all the knowledge is textbooks, unlike today. Rich, and there is no such kind of outdoor activities, which are relatively boring.
I just hope that in the future summer nursery school, there will be outdoor experiences like today, which is almost enough.
On July 9, the Ministry of Education issued a document to support qualified places to explore and carry out summer care services. Most of the content is to tutor students with homework, lead children to read, participate in labor, and expand extracurricular knowledge. Will not teach ahead.
This allows children to have more places to go during the summer vacation, and also allows parents to have clear ideas and expectations.
Zhou Hanbin
,
principal of Haishu Central Primary School in Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province
: Now it is composed of 20 people, and the class voluntarily sign up, let them experience it.
At present, the number of people receiving information is not large. Possible situations: First, it is notified that the registration time is a bit late, and the parents have their own summer vacation arrangements.
The second is because this matter is also a new thing, the parents may not be very familiar with the situation, we are the first time in experience.
Li Zimeng’s mother Zhang Wenbo
: Our family is a dual-worker. We work from 9 to 5 and sometimes work overtime. So the winter and summer vacations are my biggest problem, and they are basically handled by both parents.
I hope that the opportunities that the school can give children are those that we can learn that we can't usually learn during the semester.
If safety permits, do some research activities, or do some social practice, or help the child's physical development.
We don't want to be closed in a closed classroom every day and take some courses that are more than the outline. What we want is to improve another kind of spiritual life, the kind of life outside of class.
The summer nursery school launched this time, on the one hand, wants to reduce the burden on parents and solve the problem of nursing care; on the other hand, it also wants to reduce the burden on children’s vacation, creating a model with schools as the main body and teachers as the main force.
Because of this, not long ago, a sentence such as "Summer Custody Class is coming! Teachers want to cancel their winter and summer vacations?" appeared on the Internet.
In fact, it can be seen from the notice issued by the Ministry of Education on July 9 that teachers must not be forced to participate in student summer care services, and appropriate subsidies must be given.
At Ningbo Haishu Primary School, 20 teachers signed up for summer care, accounting for 30% of the school's teachers.
In Hangzhou, Zhejiang, more than half of the number of school teachers who had previous hosting experience signed up.
Zhao Kun
,
member of the Party Committee of the Education Bureau of Shangcheng District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province
: The professionalism of teachers is an important advantage in attracting parents to attend the summer nursery school. It ensures that teachers can take full rest and adjust during the process of participating in this activity.
Our teachers can use such activities to earn volunteer points, which can be exchanged in future exchanges between different units, as well as in job evaluation and evaluation.
For each teacher, we follow the unified standard of Hangzhou city of 500 yuan a day.
In addition, it is clearly stated in the notice that the summer custody service can be funded by means of financial subsidies, collection of service charges, or agency charges.
In Beijing, Shutuo charges 30 yuan per person per day, and the standard for lunch varies from school to school, generally ranging from 16 to 30 yuan.
At present, the school-based trusteeship model is still in the exploratory stage, and students, parents, and schools all need to adapt.
The quality of hosting services will directly determine the choice of students and parents.
Schools also need to gradually calibrate their positioning in the hosting service.
Bai Yansong
: As soon as the news about summer custody came out, many people were worried about not becoming a new summer cram school.
At the press conference this week, the Ministry of Education reiterated in particular: Summer custody, regardless of teachers or students, is voluntary and will not be mandatory, and the custody service should be based on nursing care.
At the same time, rationally organize some collective games, cultural and sports activities, homework guidance, etc., and must not organize collective supplementary lessons, teach new lessons, and must not become the child's third semester.
It stands to reason that with this explanation, everyone should rest assured, but many parents are not at ease. What can we learn from this?
02
Summer nursery school or tutoring class?
This week is the first week that Nanjing has launched community charity summer care services.
On Thursday morning, in Getang Street in Jiangbei New District, 15 elementary school students were sent by their parents one after another. They were between 6 and 12 years old. They will spend a day of summer vacation in the community summer nursery school in front of their homes.
Different from the school summer nursery school, among the teachers of the community summer nursery school, there are full-time teachers from nearby schools, and more are community volunteers who have signed up voluntarily.
Sister Shen, who has retired, is an enthusiastic person in the community. Her children have already gone to college and her husband is still at work. She has plenty of free time to participate in community activities.
In the summer nursery school, the main responsibility of Sister Shen and the volunteers is to look after and ensure the safety of the children. They will supervise the children's homework, and they will also give full play to their strengths to organize collective activities such as weaving, painting, exercises, and science popularization. .
Li Baoping, deputy director of the Administrative Committee of Nanjing Jiangbei New District
: First of all, we are not organizing another type of training class. In principle, we do not provide cultural training and teaching.
We actually provide a place for children to spend a meaningful, happy and fulfilling holiday here.
For dual-career families, the community summer nursery school opened at home can explain the urgent need.
Delivered at 8:30 in the morning and picked up at 6 in the evening. It lasts from early July to the end of August. It is a purely public service, except for meals, which are almost completely free.
Although it is difficult to say that children can learn specialties and skills compared with all kinds of off-campus care classes and tutoring classes, the children have no pressure here and can spend the summer vacation relatively easily.
Student's parent Shang Xuan
: I don't point him to learning too much, but it is better than the indulgent and excessive love that may be indulged with the elderly at home.
What's most reassuring is that many of the staff here are familiar faces. I may be more convinced of the sense of responsibility or various aspects of the staff in the community.
Elementary student
: I can make a lot of friends here, and then I can write homework, make handicrafts, and play games with everyone. The summer vacation is very practical.
Reporter
: Can you accept the arrangement of tutoring classes outside during the summer vacation?
Elementary student
: It’s not acceptable, because I think that if I can’t make friends, I’ll feel bored by myself, and I’ll be impatient to go to the tutorial class.
However, the enrollment of the summer nursery school in Getang Sub-district was not as popular as expected. There were only 7 children on the first day of the class, and then it grew to 15.
From the perspective of the whole city of Nanjing, as of this Monday, 4,254 children have signed up for summer day care classes, and 9,317 teacher volunteers have been recruited. The number of teachers is double the number of students.
Among the 11 municipal districts, Lishui District, located in the outer suburbs, has 1,557 people, accounting for 36%. In contrast, the registration situation in the main urban area is much worse.
In the eyes of many parents, off-campus teaching aids are still their first choice.
Shen Wei, a volunteer from Getang Sub-district, Jiangbei New District, Nanjing
: At the beginning, we talked to parents about this class. We are mainly responsible for taking care of it and will not give you classes.
So some parents must have weighed it up, think about it, grades are more important.
At noon on Thursday, outside a teaching and auxiliary institution in the main city, parents were constantly picking up and dropping off their children.
The father who was eating lunch with his children said that it was not that he had not considered the community summer nursery school, but after hearing that children of several years had mixed classes, he still signed up for an off-campus care class for more than 2,000 yuan a month.
Parents
: This kind of summer nursery school in the community has just been run, and it may be relatively junior, and the people sent there may be uneven.
It’s the same as flexible school leaving. We have sent flexible school leave before. Then we found that flexible school leave cannot be sent one semester. The teacher over there is only responsible for your safety. As for the homework, you write it or not. People don't care.
We may also be dissatisfied with the outside custody class, or to put it bluntly, but it may be slightly better than this free one.
Some parents prefer their children to use the summer vacation to study and recharge, so they still choose more professional hobby classes and tutoring classes.
Parents
: Just don't be too far from others, and you can't let your children lose at the starting line.
Whether it is community summer care or school summer care, as a kind of bottom-line public service, it can help some parents to solve the problem of child care, and its emergence must be worthy of recognition.
But in the face of the fierce competition among the various off-campus care classes and tutorial classes, can the teachers, interest, and professionalism become more attractive for summer day care classes?
Xiong Bingqi, Dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute
: Summer nursery school is to provide a basic nursing service. Many parents feel that it is meaningless to let my children spend their vacation life in this way. He might as well choose to spend money to send their children to training institutions.
Therefore, under this circumstance, the content of your hosting service is very important. If it is a low-level maintenance hosting service, the appeal to parents is definitely not enough.
On the one hand, we strengthen relevant guidance, and on the other hand, we strengthen the custody services, improve the quality of custody services, and change parents' understanding of custody.
Bai Yansong
: In the past week, reporters from Newsweek found in various interviews that although summer custody is a hot word, many summer custody classes are not full. In some places, enrollment is cold. That is because parents are worried that the custody class is just helping Look at children, not academic progress.
For many parents, being busy is not the biggest challenge. Children cannot use the summer cram school to improve their studies. It is the biggest challenge that affects the future entrance of high school and university!
What should I do?
Although various off-campus tutoring classes are strictly regulated, parents are also thinking about their own tactics. Then, how can summer tutoring classes increase their appeal?
03
can't just care
With the approach of summer vacation, parents near Wujiaochang Street in Shanghai sent their children to this community garden for care.
At this moment, Liu Yuelai, who is leading the children to find butterflies, is exploring a new idea of summer nursery school. While taking care of him, he also educates his children on nature.
Six years ago, as a street community planner, Liu Yuelai planned a community garden in this residential area and established a charity organization to operate the community garden.
Under their leadership, the community garden has created a landscape suitable for children to get close to nature through the way of co-construction, co-governance and sharing among residents.
Liu Yuelai, director of Tongji University Community Garden and Community Building Experiment Center
: I always think that extracurricular activities can allow him to be exposed to more nature, especially for a natural education in nature.
Another is to allow them, these children, to establish a collaborative team spirit.
In this community garden maintained by the residents, parents plan activities with professional social workers and volunteers through voluntary registration and inclusive participation, filling the children’s vacation time with summer care activities that do not violate the children’s nature. .
Different from the summer care in the classroom, here, children who have been away from nature in the concrete jungle can touch the soil and pick fruits and vegetables here.
Liu Yuelai, director of the Community Garden and Community Building Experiment Center of Tongji University
: This kind of natural experience also has a very big feature.
The corn was a seed when it was planted, and then we will take the children to feel it.
As Liu Yuelai's team promoted the model of community gardens to other communities in Shanghai, this kind of summer care based on community gardens also provided parents with new choices.
Although a certain fee is charged, professional social education resources are allowed to enter, and parents as paying parties can also put forward ideas on the courses. This kind of summer nursery school has a certain attraction.
This coincides with the guidance proposed by the Ministry of Education to actively expand social education resources and run summer trusteeships.
Xiong Bingqi, Dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute
: I have always suggested that summer trusteeship should be provided by integrating multiple forces, including the strength of our school, the strength of the community, and the strength of our social institutions to jointly carry out our summer trusteeship.
The best way is actually to coordinate the community. I coordinate the public educational resources in my community, such as libraries, gymnasiums, and youth activity centers.
Some people think that these staff members are more complicated and cannot guarantee their professionalism, but they are not.
Because our hosting services require a variety of talents, this also solves the problem of relying solely on teachers to provide hosting services.
As early as eight years ago, Shanghai mainly focused on communities and streets, and explored and opened love summer nursery schools. This summer, there were more than 500 summer nurseries in Shanghai.
However, in eight years of practice, such summer nursery schools often face development bottlenecks due to monotonous activities, and urgently need to be upgraded.
This year, some communities pay attention to the introduction of social resources. Some summer nursery schools of Liu Yuelai's team have also received more funds with the support of the community, which will help the further expansion of high-quality summer nursery resources.
Xiong Bingqi, Dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute
: Of course, our starting point is to solve the parents’ difficulty in nursing care, but it is definitely not only nursing care. If there is only nursing care, such trusteeship will definitely become a form and it will be difficult to get the welcome of parents .
If our government gives some subsidies, we can also use this fee to purchase third-party services, then we can listen to parents' opinions in this charging process.
For example, we want to develop this hosting service, what kind of content we provide, who will provide this content, how much our cost, and how much we charge to parents. In this case, we will push such hosting based on the opinions of parents. The service items are chosen by the parents to participate.
This helps to open more custody service projects to improve parents’ satisfaction with custody services.
In Xiong Bingqi's view, in order to make the summer custody class run from scratch, the service content of the custody class needs to be attractive enough, and parents need to change their minds and really think about what kind of summer vacation their children need.
Liu Yuelai also found in practice that the development of the summer nursery school in the community garden is inseparable from the renewal and compatibility of parents' concepts.
Student parent Wang Xinyue
: As far as this kind of relatively long race, you see that the one who runs fast at the beginning, in fact, often does not necessarily win the championship at the end.
Then why don't I use these vacations. When others "overtake on a curve", I will take care of "this car" and do a good job of his maintenance to help him go further in the future.
Bai Yansong
: Although the summer custody class has been explored in various places, it is really this year that the Ministry of Education attaches such importance.
It stands to reason that this is a good thing and is to do practical things for the parents, but even if it is a good thing, you must understand what the parents are thinking about and what they are looking forward to.
It is by no means strictly controlling online and offline cram schools. There will be an immediate market for summer custody classes. There are many things that need to be explored and tried.
Nothing can be terribly good from the beginning. It is valuable to advance in the exploration and change the concepts of all parties during the exploration.
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