Working parents create big market for after-school care

Two students take after-school classes of taekwondo at a training center in Bozhou, Anhui province. [Photo/China Daily]

When I received the entrance permit letter for my son's primary school this summer, I was excited for a moment, but then I considered the consequences: first and foremost, should I quit my job?

The reasons were simple: School gets off at around 3:30 pm every day. How can I deal with the after-school care?

Breakfast and dinner will have to be prepared. That'll also have to be planned.

It's a half-day school on Fridays. What about that?

The questions flew so thick and fast into my mind, that I morphed into a worried mom, even before school had started.

I wondered why the school finishes so early in the day, from the perspective of parents' work hours.

When he was in kindergarten, however, I had no such concerns. Three meals were served and kid pick-up was at 5 pm. My husband's office was nearby, so sending the kid to the kindergarten and fetching him back became the dad's routine.

"I believe we have more solutions than difficulties. Why not try after-school care agency?" suggested my husband.

Soon, we hired a trustworthy educational agency. It took the responsibility of picking up my son after school, driving him around in a minibus, tutoring him as per teachers' requirements, feeding him yoghurt and fruit and giving him free activity time while mingling with other kids of different ages.

All this before we pick up the son at 6:30 pm. The monthly fee for such service is 1,200 yuan ($190). We've been using the service for two months. So far so good, for the three of us.

It's true－where there is need, there is a market. I received loads of fliers for after-school care service at the school gate on my son's first day in September. I didn't pay much attention mostly because I assume anything that is easily available is not worth our attention.

Most of the after-school service providers are self-employed family businesses. Some of them have no business license, I fear. They run the business just because of the huge demand from working parents with school-going kids. The service I chose is a decent one, licensed for training and after-school education. Of course, the service charge is a little bit higher than average. The market price ranges from 800 yuan to 2,000 yuan per month.

There are no statistics about the size of such an after-school care market, but educational training services in China were said to be worth 960 billion yuan by 2012, taken up by 12,380 occupational technology training institutes and 20,155 private training schools, according to data from the Ministry of Education.

Services includes occupational training, academic-related courses, interest－and art-oriented workshops and A-list camp for mathematics and other natural science courses.