In Japan, September to January every year is a season for preparation for your child to enter a kindergarten. Most of people hope to enter a licensed kindergarten for the reason of cheap nursery fee. However, some of them unfortunately cannot help entering a non-licensed kindergarten even costing them bit more expensive than that of licensed one.
As I wrote here, it has been pretty difficult to leave your child in a licensed kindergarten especially in urban area of each region lately. Depending on the kindergarten, it gives priority to accepting Japanese children than foreigners’ children in terms of their language skills and prevention of foreign children’s isolation by racial minority in a group of a classroom
Thinking of it to lower the cost of your child’s kindergarten, it is correct to choose a licensed kindergarten but if you are non-Japanese who has lived in Japan for not so long time since you came to Japan, you also consider carefully non-licensed kindergarten for your child just in case your child is added to waiting list.
Contents
What is non-licensed kindergarten?
Non-licensed kindergarten is called “Muninka-Hoikuen”(無認可保育園) or <“Ninka-gai-Hoikuen“(認可外保育園). When you hear “non-licensed kindergarten”, it reminds you of illegal kindergarten that ignore the governmental standards of child care but it is not like that.
A licensed kindergarten is not national occupational licensing so even if it is not licensed by the Japanese government, it can uniquely provide services for child care publicly.
The governmental standards of child care is a condition of receiving a license. The governmental standards of child care are like the width of rooms and a garden, number of nursery teachers, whether it serves lunch meal for children.
A kindergarten that satisfies such conditions and is accepted by the authority becomes licensed kindergarten. However, even if a kindergarten has no license from the authority, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t satisfy the conditions. There are some non-licensed kindergartens that don’t acquire license for some reasons in spite of completing governmental standards. So it is not that child care quality is not better than licensed one. Each types of kindergarten has unique advantages. There are things that is allowed to do because of no restriction from the governmental standards.
Unique advantages of non-licensed kindergarten
Non-licensed kindergarten is not restricted by the authority so it has unique benefits which can not be received in licensed one.
Lohas kids center clover
This kindergarten is located in Setagaya-ku. The feature of this kindergarten is its unique educational policy, for example, making children play outside as much as possible even when it rains and snows
Moreover, this kindergarten relies not perfectly on nursery teachers to teach children but inviting instructors from outside as necessary, they take charge of physical education, music, and English class to make up a shortfall that nursery teachers cannot do.
Morino-Yochien(forest kindergarten)
Morino-Yochien(forest kindergarten) managed by NPO, kids Shizengakkou (kids nature school) makes children play outside at neighboring public park as much as possible when it rains and snows and take children for a picnic by train once a month on a regular basis.
Thinking carefully about health of children, organic foods are used in provided lunch meal in terms of dietary education.
Morino-Yochien(forest kindergarten)
Shizenno-kuni Hoikuen (Nature country kindergarten)
This kindergarten is located in Machida-shi, Tokyo. It possesses a mountain that has 1000 330㎡. Children can play freely in such a wide ground.
This kindergarten is divided into 5 zones depending on the educational purposes, which is like the first zone is for drama, the second zone is for music, the third zone is for architecture, the forth zone is for science, the fifth zone is for art.
This kindergarten’s educational policy is “nature” and “art”. Children is given an opportunity to publish their work at a museum.
Kindergarten having strengths in eurhythmics education
Kindergarten “kirakira kids nursery” in Shibuya has uniquely eurythmics education. The backgrounds of nursery teachers is a dancer and musician. Some of them graduated from music college.
Admissions policy of licensed and non-licensed kindergarten
Children of mothers who is now seeking job or absence from work tend to be not chosen and added on waiting list. In contrast, some of non-licensed kindergartens has no criterion for admission about mother’s working situation. Moreover, non-licensed kindergarten is willing to accept children even on Sunday and national holiday, and overtime nursing in the night time. It is quite adoptable enough to consider each family’s situation.
Admissions policy of licensed kindergarten
Admission policy is followed by the standards called “admission index” and “availability index”. Indexes standards are different depending on the municipality. You can check those information from the website of municipality having jurisdiction over the region where you live.
Indexes are increased or reduced along with the following criterion
- working
- Job seeking
- Confinement
- illness
- Nursing parents
- Disaster
- Job training
The more time is assigned for working and nursing or even staying in hospital because of illness, the higher the index value becomes. If the sum of index values is quite low, your child is far from admission.
Those items are divided quite detailedly and slight difference of working hour and other factors directly influence on whether or not a kindergarten accept your child.
How to know if my child could enter a licensed kindergarten? Learn nursery point (index) system
Nursery expenses
What you are really worried about when you deiced a kindergarten to leave your child in is monthly nursery fee.
In case of a licensed kindergarten, because it is subsidized by the government or municipality, nursery fee is relatively cheaper than non-licensed one’s. Licensed kindergarten’s fee is decided based on the pervious resident tax payment. Resident tax is decided based on the previous declared income. Annual household income is indirectly reflected on licensed kindergarten’s fee.
How is licensed kindergarten’s nursery rate decided by the government and municipality in Japan?
In contrast, non-licensed kindergarten’s fee is fixed uniformly and not changeable depending on the annual household income and it is mostly decided by the kindergarten. Depending on the municipality, it supports financially non-licensed kindergarten, however kindergarten fee tends to be more expensive than licensed one.
Instead, some non-licensed kindergartens provide excellent service which you usually prepare yourself for your child when you leave your child in licensed kindergarten’s care.
For example, non-licensed kindergarten provide snacks, milk and diapers which is included in the fee. Likewise, things to do in a licensed kindergarten like writing your child name on a diaper, putting your child’s child stuff into a fixed place when you take your child to a kindergarten are not obligation in a non-licensed kindergarten.
For those mothers who are really busy at their work, these are very good advantage enough to accept the defect of nursery fee expensiveness in terms of not spending too much time for your child’s preparation in the busy morning.
Things you pay attention to when you choose a kindergarten
Check lightness of each room
You firstly check lightness of each room of a kindergarten. You have two objective to do this. The first is seeing atmosphere of a kindergarten. If rooms are dim, it can directly influence on people’s emotion and working motivation. If teacher is not energetic, how can your child grow with energy there? Do you want to leave your child in such a place? If you want your child to grow positively and cheerfully in a kindergarten, you don’t miss this point when you check.
The second is seeing cleanliness. Check if cheating room’s dirtiness by darkening a room. Even if room’s dimness has nothing to do with room’s cleanliness, how can they find dust to collect at everyplace? This is the proof that they don’t care about cleanliness of rooms.
Check the number of licensed nursery teachers and the frequency of teachers coming and going
Here, you should see if there are teachers having nursery qualification with rich knowledge about education of children and see the frequency of teacher coming and going.
The best solution is to ask these questions to the principal of a kindergarten directly. You just ask if the number of licensed teachers is sufficient to look after every children and how frequent teacher’s turnaround is.
These are very important standard to inspect if kindergarten is run healthily. A kindergarten with a big turnaround of nursery teachers has possibility to lack necessary man power to look after children.
Check the stance of countermeasure against disaster
Check if there are emergency doors and fire extinguishers. If you can’t find those, you just ask where those are. Likewise, ask about countermeasure against the case a suspicious person sneaks in.
There are so many non-licensed kindergartens installed in second or upper floor of a building. In that case, if you are explained the stance of emergency situation and how people can escape from the building in minute detail before you ask questions, the kindergarten is worth trusting.
If you have questions about the stance of countermeasure against emergency situation, try to ask as much as you are convinced because it indirectly connects to protecting your child from unforeseen disaster and criminal.
Check frequency of letting children watch TV
Letting children watch TV is a quite easy manner to make children quite. Children can be controllable when they watch TV. However, a kindergarten is a place to learn sociality through various actives for children to grow up. Because of annoying noisiness of children, choosing easily to let children watch TV in order to keep tranquility of rooms by teacher’s one-sided own convenience is nothing but laziness.
Are you a mother who let your child keep watching TV on and on for a long time because he/she annoys you with noisiness?
If teachers let children watch TV in a kindergarten, you just ask what purpose they have to let children watch TV from the viewpoint of child care and child education.