Almost every child between the ages of three and the start of school is cared for in a day-care center – but there are parents whose wishes for childcare are not fulfilled. According to the paper available to the German Press Agency, 49.1 percent of the parents of children under the age of three needed a childcare place in 2022. However, the childcare rate for children under the age of three was only 35.5 percent.
It is true that there is still a gap in childcare, “in daycare centers, but also in primary schools,” said Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens). This is regionally distributed quite differently. “That’s why the introduction of a legal entitlement to an all-day primary school place is so important. That’s the next priority,” said the Greens politician. In 2021, the federal and state governments decided on a legal right to all-day care in primary schools, which will be gradually introduced from 2026.
The care rate is the proportion of children cared for in day-care facilities (e.g. in day-care centers) or in publicly funded child day care (e.g. a publicly funded childcare place with a childminder) of all children in this age group.
According to the study, around 2,651,000 children from three years of age up to the start of school were attending a child day care service nationwide on the reporting date, March 1, 2022. That is around 39,000 more children than in the previous year. The attendance rate was 92 percent. Almost every child in this age group attended a childcare service.
The basis for the data presented in the study is a survey of around 35,000 parents of children up to the age of ten last year. How many parents want a childcare place also depends on the age of the children: the older the child is, the more often parents express a need for childcare. 64.9 percent of the parents of one-year-old children and 80.7 percent of the parents of two-year-old children would have liked a daycare place for their child in 2022. Compared to the previous year, 5.3 percentage points more parents of one-year-olds and 3.5 percentage points more parents of two-year-olds said they needed childcare.
The left accuses the minister of “window dressing”. “Around half of the parents would like a childcare place for their child under the age of three – just a third gets it: That is the balance of 10 years of legal entitlement to a daycare place,” said the spokeswoman for children and youth policy for the parliamentary group, Heidi Reichinnek . A legal claim alone does not change anything, concepts and investments are needed. Everything else is “eyewash”.
The federal government wants to make an investment with a view to the quality of childcare: the federal states are to be supported with four billion euros. They then have to use the money primarily for quality development – for example in recruiting specialists or strengthening day-care center management.
“Now is exactly the right time for it,” said the Green politician in an interview with the dpa. “We are already working on the next step: together with the federal states and the municipalities, we are currently developing proposals for a quality development law with nationwide standards in child day care,” said Paus.
