Jane Chen / Shanghai Daily news

With the country's expected third baby boom around the corner, local kids have insufficient facilities to receive preschool education due to a shortage of kindergartens and nursing staff, today's Jiefang Daily reported.
Citing data obtained from the city's educational and population authorities, the report said, from last year onwards, an additional 10,000 children are attaining the age each year, to start preschool education, thus demanding an additional 60 kindergartens and over 2,000 nursing staff, citywide.
Of the city's existing 1,000 kindergartens approximately, half are overcrowded, with the most crowded class' of children being nearly double the permissible number.
The number of kindergartens in Shanghai reduced after the local education authority closed a number of preschool educational facilities in the previous decade, when the birth rate remained low.
However, children of the country's second baby boom of the late 1970s and 1980s have grown, attaining the age to have their own babies, thereby ushering the third baby boom after the country's foundation in 1949.
Education experts advised the government to build more kindergartens and upgrade the existing facilities in order to cope with the rising demand for preschool education as well as to establish an overall plan for preschool facilities that cater to the fluctuating population in the future.
In addition to the insufficient number of kindergartens, nursing staff are also urgently needed, the educational authority said. Only about 100 professional preschool teachers graduate each year from East China Normal University, the city's only university trainer of preschool education majors.  The figure is far from enough as compared to the demand.
To bridge the gap, ECNU has started vocational training of non-students, mostly laid-off workers in their forties or fifties. About two-thirds of the trainees have passed the course and are serving at local kindergartens after obtaining professional certificates.