system “before collapse”
Hundreds of thousands of daycare places are missing in Germany
05/07/2023 04:07
Every child is legally entitled to attend a day-care center. Nevertheless, 378,000 places are missing nationwide – with no prospect of improvement. Left spokeswoman Reichinnek is harsh with the federal government.
Although there has been a legal entitlement for every child from the age of one to care in a day care center for almost ten years, there is currently a lack of 378,000 places nationwide. This is reported by the editorial network Germany (RND), citing a response from the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs to a request from the left. Accordingly, there is a lack of 291,000 day-care places for one to three-year-old children and 87,000 places for three- to six-year-old children. According to RND, the answer is based on figures from 2021.
378,000 children are thus deprived of the opportunity for early childhood education and social learning, said the spokeswoman for child and youth policy of the left in the Bundestag, Heidi Reichinnek, the RND. The federal government continues to shirk responsibility instead of taking these numbers as an opportunity “to finally support municipalities and states appropriately in the expansion of daycare centers,” she criticized.
Day care centers “chronically underfunded”
According to calculations by the left, the costs for day care centers are now almost 50 billion euros a year. The federal government will contribute around 2.8 billion euros, the rest will be shouldered by the federal states and municipalities, according to the report. “The investment program for day-care centers announced in the coalition agreement does not exist to this day,” criticized Reichinnek. Rather, “the chronically underfunded day care system is on the verge of collapse”.
In all likelihood, according to the report, the situation will not improve in the foreseeable future. According to the forecasts available to the federal government, between 244,000 and 310,000 additional places for children under the age of three would be needed in western Germany by 2030. In eastern Germany, a maximum of 5,600 additional places are expected to be needed by 2030.
According to projections from 2020 to 2030, 128,000 to 224,000 additional places will be needed in West Germany for children between the ages of three and school entry. In eastern Germany, on the other hand, a total of 30,000 to 48,000 fewer places will be needed by 2030 than in the year 2019.