According to plans by Federal Minister for Family Affairs Lisa Paus (Greens), the federal states are to receive almost four billion euros over the next two years for further quality improvements in daycare centers. This is provided for in a draft of the Ministry for a “Kita Quality Act”, which is available to the German Press Agency.
Specifically, there is talk of 1.993 billion euros in 2023 and 2024. In the budget deliberations before the summer break, the size had already been agreed in principle.
The law ties in with the so-called good day-care center law of the former Family Minister Franziska Giffey (SPD), which expires at the end of the year. The federal government had made around 5.5 billion euros available to the states since 2019.
They could invest the money, for example, in more childcare positions, better pay for the staff, longer opening hours or in the redesign of rooms and play areas. The federal states could also use the funds to reduce day-care center fees.
The explanatory memorandum to the draft law now emphasizes a “stronger focus on further developing the quality of child day care”. It should therefore no longer be possible to implement new contribution reductions. In the past, experts had criticized the reduction in daycare fees for high earners in some federal states and called for the money to be invested in staff.
If parental contributions are levied, according to the draft, these must also be staggered nationwide according to mandatory criteria, such as the parents’ income.
In the connecting law to the Good Daycare Act, language support is also declared to be one of the central fields of action. The Ministry of Family Affairs recently had to take a lot of criticism on the subject because another federal program – “Language Daycare Centers” – is due to expire at the end of the year, with which Berlin had been funding additional staff at daycare centers for language development since 2016. In the current year, 248 million euros were budgeted for this.
The ministry responded to the loud criticism, especially from the federal states, with reference to the pending and now available “Kita-Quality Law”, through which the federal states could also continue language support. The federal states are actually responsible for day-care centers themselves.
According to the ministry, the present draft was last agreed within the federal government, but could already be on the cabinet agenda this Wednesday. The Bundestag and Bundesrat would also have to agree.
