Almost 20 thousand three-year-old children were left without a place in a preschool institution in September

The government said on Tuesday there were almost 20,000 places left to ensure pre-primary education could be available to all children currently enrolled in kindergartens in September, setting up a working group to develop an action plan.

“The previous leader failed to create enough places in pre-school institutions to accommodate children who had already benefited from free access to kindergartens,” the press service of the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI) said, warning that thousands of children and families are at risk will remain unanswered.”

According to government data, there are about 29,000 children in kindergartens who will turn three in September, the age that marks the transition to preschool.

However, “to ensure universal preschool education at the age of three, there will be a shortage of more than 19,600 places,” MEKI adds.

The ministry also highlights that 12,070 children are enrolled in the Happy Kindergarten programme, a project developed by the previous government to guarantee free childcare in kindergartens for all children born from September 2021 onwards.

The current government team accuses the previous team of “lack of planning” for failing to anticipate and ensure that these children now require a place in a preschool.

The Ministries of Education, Science and Innovation and Labour, Solidarity and Social Security decided to create a working group that should conduct a detailed diagnosis of the existing network of kindergartens by the end of the month.

The group must also present at that time “an action plan that guarantees free pre-school education in 2024/2025 for children covered by the Happy Daycare programme,” MECI said in a statement.

The task force will also have to develop a strategy by the end of November that will “ensure continuity of the transition from kindergarten to early childhood education and pedagogical quality for children aged zero to six years.”

Last week, the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Protection said that families will have access to free kindergartens in the private sector if there are no social network vacancies in the area where they live or work, and not just in the municipality, as was the case before so far.

The new measures aim to increase family choice in existing support offers for children under three, reduce “travel between work, nursery and home” and “improve the quality of family life”.

The government has decided that private kindergartens will be able to “benefit from additional government funding if their opening hours exceed 11 hours per day, under the same conditions as kindergartens in the social and solidarity sectors already enjoy.”

The initiative to provide free kindergarten to all children under three years of age was announced in 2022 by the government of António Costa and initially covered only the public, social and solidarity sectors. In January 2023, the program was extended to private institutions.