Executive Yuan had approved the “measures that counter falling fertility rates” proposed by Ministry of Education and other 11 Ministries on July 25th, 2018, to lay the foundation of Taiwan’s future manpower and reduce the strain of child-rearing. In order to achieve the comprehensive care from the age 0 to 6, following these two major guidelines of “Expanding the availability of affordable public education” and “Alleviate parents’ financial burden” for the education and care services of the preschool children, the government has implemented a raft of measures such as “Expand the affordable education and care services”, “Lower tuition fees” and “Doubled Childcare allowances”. Those measures are the most supportive child-rearing policies provided by government to the young families in recent years. It is expected that by the year of 2024, the enrollment rates of preschool for the children between 2 to 6 years old will raise up to 72%. Among them, 70% of children attending the education service will have the opportunities to choose the affordable education and care services.

1.Expand the affordable education and care services

Ministry of Education has always adopted the expansion of the public and non-profit preschool as one of the major policies, and subsidized the local government to increase the number of public preschools since 2000. To show the determination of expanding the public ECEC services, the “Measures that counter falling fertility rate“ had increased the capabilities, and it is expected to increase total number of 3,000 addition classes in 8 years period (from 2017 to 2024).  The goal has been reached in 2022 ahead of schedule, providing 257,000 openings.

Furthermore, in order to increase parents’ choice of affordable education and child care services, and to provide opportunities for private kindergartens that meet the six requirements to cooperate with the government, there are 1,859 private preschools in 2022, providing than 210,000 openings. And public and quasi-public kindergartens provide about 470,000 openings in total.

2.Lower tuition fees

Children attending public, non-profit and quasi-public kindergartens: the difference between the parents’ monthly fixed payment and the original kindergarten fees will be subsidized by the government to pay the the kindergartens directly, so that parents can immediately feel that the monthly payment of their children’s school fees has been substantially reduced , and gradually reduce the amount of payment .From August 2022, parents can pay up to 3,000 NTD per child each month , and the fee will be further reduced according to the order of children's birth.

In the 2022, the enrollment rate of 2-year-old children reached 39.1% (an increase of more than 24.4% compared with 2016), and 87.9% of children aged 3 to under 6 (an increase of 15.2% compared with 2016). Obviously, the policy will help parents to increase their willingness to send children to preschools.

3.Doubled Childcare allowances

For children aged 2 to under 5 who have not received public or quasi-public education and childcare services, a monthly childcare allowance will be paid to reduce the family burden; for children aged 5 to before entering primary schools studying in private kindergartens shall be handled in the same way as childcare subsidies.

In addition, the 3826th meeting of the Executive Yuan in October 2022 decided that starting from January 2023, the regulations on wealth exclusion of childcare allowance will be cancelled, and children of families with a tax rate of more than 20% can also apply for childcare allowance  and it will be extended to 5 years old who are not studying at school to pre-primary children.