Starting this year, if a children's exit from a daycare center leads to the consolidation of existing classes, flexible class size arrangements within the total capacity will be allowed. Additionally, a grace period allowing directors of daycare centers with 11-20 current enrollees to also serve as caretakers is extended until February of next year.
The Ministry of Education announced on the 2nd that starting in January, it will implement the '2025 daycare business guidance guidelines' containing these details.
The daycare business guidance guideline is a type of manual that includes information on the operation and management of daycare centers, as well as an introduction to systems. The Ministry of Education annually gathers field opinions to revise these guidelines to address deficiencies observed in the process of system operation.
The main revisions this year include relaxing the criteria for composing classes by lower age, relaxing the requirements for flexible class size arrangements, and extending the grace period for the director-teacher concurrent role based on the current capacity.
Specifically, when organizing classes by lower age, mixing ages or allowing flexible arrangements is now possible. Previously, such operations were strictly prohibited.
Also, if consolidating existing classes due to a child's exit, flexible class size arrangements are permitted within the total capacity of the daycare. This is to address the difficulty in class operation when children exit mid-term.
For daycare centers eligible for institution childcare fee support with capacities of 21-39 if they have 11-20 current enrollees, the director can also serve as a caretaker until February of next year. The grace period that previously ended in February of this year has been extended by another year to alleviate the employment burden on daycare centers.
Additionally, changes have been made to areas such as the improvement of support criteria for the Nuri Curriculum operational costs, the extension of relaxed criteria application for staff salary support for toddler classes, and regulations related to closed-circuit (CC) TV access.
This year's daycare business guidance guidelines will be distributed to local governments and related agencies within this month. They can also be accessed on the Ministry of Education website.