Education and childcare groups demand halt to plan merging care for children ages 0-5

Early childhood education and childcare groups, along with parent organizations, have come out against the National Education Commission's plan to integrate care and education for children ages 0 to 5, demanding that a related report be scrapped.

A coalition of 13 organizations — including the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations, the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union, and the Korean Association of Kindergartens — held a joint picket outside Government Complex Seoul on Thursday, calling for the withdrawal of a report by the commission's special committee on early childhood and for the plan to be dropped from the national education development blueprint.

According to the coalition, the special committee's report proposes renaming early childhood institutions as "infant and toddler schools," merging teacher certification systems, consolidating fiscal arrangements, and enacting a new early childhood education law. The coalition expressed concern that these proposals could be incorporated into the 2028–2037 National Education Development Plan.

The coalition cited a 2023 study by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education on restructuring teacher qualification and training systems to achieve childcare-kindergarten integration. In that study, 72.9 percent of 1,000 parents surveyed opposed blanket integration covering all children ages 0 to 5 and the merging of teacher certification.

The coalition said infants ages 0 to 2 and young children ages 3 to 5 have distinct developmental needs and should not be forced into a single institutional and teacher certification framework. It also proposed establishing a dedicated professional care system for children under 3, including designating home-based childcare centers as specialized infant care facilities.

The coalition plans to formally submit to the commission a set of proposals: restructuring the system into separate specialized infant care institutions and early childhood education institutions, building age-appropriate frameworks tailored to developmental characteristics, strengthening administrative and fiscal support, and pursuing broader social consensus.

The coalition also plans to seek meetings with the National Education Commission and the Ministry of Education this month, and to launch a nationwide petition drive alongside a campaign to gather public opinions through the commission's online platform.

"Home-based childcare centers must not be absorbed into a uniform integrated system through the unification process," the coalition said. "Their identity and function as specialized infant care institutions must be guaranteed by law, and a corresponding administrative and fiscal support system must be put in place."