Status: 08/23/2022 3:54 p.m
The “Good Kita Act” expires at the end of the year, and the “Kita Quality Act” is to follow. It is planned that the federal states will receive almost four billion euros in the next two years. The focus is on language development.
According to plans by Federal Minister for Family Affairs Lisa Paus (Greens), the federal states are to receive almost four billion euros over the next two years for further quality improvements in the daycare centers. This is provided for in a draft of the Ministry for a “Kita Quality Act”, which is available to the dpa news agency. Specifically, there is talk of 1.993 billion euros in 2023 and 2024. In the budget deliberations before the summer break, the size had already been agreed in principle.
According to Paus, the project is to be launched this Wednesday in the federal cabinet. The Bundestag and Bundesrat would then also have to agree.
The law ties in with the so-called “Good Daycare Law” by former family minister Franziska Giffey (SPD), which expires at the end of the year. The federal government had made around 5.5 billion euros available to the states since 2019. They could invest the money, for example, in more childcare positions, better pay for the staff, longer opening times or in the redesign of rooms and play areas. The federal states could also use the funds to reduce day-care center fees.
Quality of care, no reduction in fees
The explanatory memorandum to the draft law now emphasizes a “stronger focus on further developing the quality of child day care”.
As with the predecessor “Gute-Kita-Gesetz”, the federal states can invest the money, for example, in more educator positions, better pay for staff or longer opening hours. However, the funds should no longer be used for new measures to reduce daycare fees for parents. In the past, experts had criticized the reduction in daycare fees for high earners in some federal states and called for the money to be invested in staff.
If parental contributions are levied, according to the draft, these must also be staggered nationwide according to mandatory criteria, such as the parents’ income. Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) told the dpa that it was about working more closely on the quality standards. “Daycare centers are not just care facilities, they are early childhood educational institutions. This law makes a contribution to further strengthening them here.”
Language support instead of “language day-care centers”
What is new is that language support is declared one of the central fields of action for day-care center investments. The Ministry of Family Affairs has had to accept criticism for weeks because the federal program “Language Daycare Centers” is due to expire at the end of the year, with which Berlin has been funding additional staff at daycare centers for language development since 2016. In the current year, 248 million euros were budgeted for this.
GEW criticizes new priorities
The Education and Science Union renewed its criticism at the end of the program: “There is a lot of misunderstanding and anger in the daycare centers about the priorities set by the federal government. It is a catastrophic sign and a bitter disappointment for all those who have placed their hopes in the traffic light coalition have,” said GEW board member Doreen Siebernik.
The ministry has already reacted in the past with reference to the “Kita-Quality-Act” that is now available, with which the federal states could also continue language support. In principle, the federal states are responsible for day-care centers themselves. “Language support in the day-care centers is very, very important. What you take with you in the first few years of your childhood, you benefit from afterwards or vice versa,” said Paus. It is therefore important that language support is a quality feature in the new Kita Act.
The Left: Education must be non-contributory
Social associations basically welcomed the fact that the federal government wants to continue to support daycare centers financially. “Quality development is a task that can only be successfully designed together,” says a statement by the Paritätisches Gesamtverband. The association speaks of an important sign.
Criticism came from the left because of the planned restrictions on the promotion of day-care center fee reductions: “Financing the exemption from contributions is a question of educational and distributional justice in this country,” explained the state chairmen of the party from the federal states with left-wing government participation Berlin, Bremen, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Thuringia. Education must be non-contributory, “from kindergarten to master’s degree”.