Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party calls for cutting parents’ financial burden in pre-school and university education. The opposition Democratic Party calls for free pre-school and high school education and drastically reducing the burden of university education. Nippon Ishin no Kai is proposing a constitutional amendment to make all education through universities free of charge.
These proposals are made just as many households struggle with the heavy cost of education of children even as their disposable income does not steadily rise. According to a 2009 education ministry report, which calculated the average cost of educating a child from kindergarten through university, parents paid ¥8.4 million if the child attended public schools through high school and a national university, and ¥11.6 million if the child attended a private kindergarten and a private university. The cost includes paying for school lunches and education-related activities outside school.
Source of reference: Japan Times
Recently, we have many times to hear news about free of charge for nursery services. The Japanese government covers all non-approved nursery facilities, such as nursery schools that are established in accordance with the local government’s own standards, for free of charge for early childhood education and childcare.
Free of charge policy is to aim for guaranteeing high quality education without distinction. The prime mister, Shinzo Abe expressed that he wants to arrange the polity for entire children to be able to receive high quality education for financial burden reduction and investment to child rearing households to tackle with the facing problem of decreasing birthrate and aging population in stages.
In terms of free of nursery services, the government put its focus on lowering the standard age of compulsory education that principally starts from elementary school.
In 2017, the cabinet approved that it proceeds with free of charge for nursery services in stages as securing financial resources and various schemes are now under consideration to head towards implementation.
Free of charge for nursery services has been decided to start from April, 2019. For the first attempt, its partial enforcement with some conditions is going to be implemented. Full-scale enforcement is going to be implemented in October, 2019.
Reason why there is time lag from the first enforcement to full-scale enforcement is because the government is going to allocate tax revenue collected from increment of increasing tax rate from 8% to 10%. Increasing tax rate is expected to show increment of 5.6 trillion yen. 2 trillion yen out of 5.6 trillion yen will become the financial resource for free of charge for nursery services to infant education.
Contents
Households subject to free of charge for early childhood education
The type of children subject to the free of charge for infant education policy is a children aged from 0 to 5 years old right before going to elementary school. However, there is a case a child will no longer be subject to this policy depending on the condition.
Prior to implement of full-scale enforcement, free of charge policy is going to be adopted partially in stages. For example, reducing nursery fee in half or adopting free of nursery fee for households that satisfy the fixed standard such as one-parent household, many-children household, a household whose income level is less than the standard. Of course, there is possibility that children not covered by this policy can be included some day.
Households that have children aged from 3 to 5 year old
Those households are subject to this free of charge policy. Licensed kindergarten and private kindergarten are at no cost.
In terms of leaving children temporarily in private kindergarten and non-licensed day care center, another conditions are regulated separately.
Households that have children aged 0 to 2 years old
For those households that have children aged 0 to 2 years old, it is applied to only the resident tax exempted households. Licensed kindergartens and nursery schools are at no cost. Non-licensed ones are subject to provision of subsidies.
If all the infant education is at not cost
When you hear only superficial information of this policy, you may tend to think all the nursery services related to infant education becomes free of charge but its application range is expected to be limited for the first attempt depending on the nursery services.
Licensed day care and nursery services
Children aged from 3 to 5 years old, who go to licensed daycare are all subject to free of charge policy. In case of households that have children aged from 0 to 2 years old, it is applied to only resident tax exempted households.
In terms of other nursery facilities, if those are government-certified or licensed ones, free of charge policy is adopted.
Non-licensed(certified) nursery services
Non-licensed daycare center, kindergartens, nursery schools, baby hotel and babysitter are not under the application range of free of charge policy.
However, subsidies costing 42,000 yen per month plan to be paid to children aged from 0 to 2 years old and 37,000 yen per month plan to be paid to children aged from 3 to 5 years old.
These subsidies are the maximum payment. If you need support by a subsidy, you need to be approved that your household is in need of service service for children by a municipality.
Expenses of lunch meal
In Japanese elementary school, tuition fees are at no cost but lunch meal expenses are paid. Likewise, even municipalities that implements free of charge for infant education policy change lunch meal expense. As of 2018, there is no discussion about free meal policy, lunch meal expenses are expected not to be included in this free of charge policy at the present stage.
Things excluded from free of charge for early childhood education and childcare
- Admission fee
- Transportation fee (including school bus)
- Nursery insurance
- Lunch meal
- school supplies
- Events (festival, outing, etc…)