Picking a Riga private kindergarten and letting the city cover its share? That’s about to get harder.
From next school year, Riga plans to pay its share of a private kindergarten only if the city can’t give your child a place. Families will list three city kindergartens first, and co-funding kicks in only if none of them has a spot for a child aged 1.5 or older. It applies only to kids who haven’t started kindergarten yet. Iveta Nagla, head of preschools at the city’s Education, Culture and Sport Department, laid out the plan to Latvian Radio in a report out Tuesday.
The short version
- From the next school year, co-funding for a private kindergarten only if none of three chosen city kindergartens has a place for your child (aged 1.5 and up).
- Only for kids who haven’t started kindergarten yet. Children already enrolled aren’t affected.
- Riga pays €501.91 a month per child aged 1.5 to 4, and €351.98 for 5- and 6-year-olds.
- City kindergartens now have about 18,500 kids, down from nearly 26,000 ten years ago.
- Riga ran 147 preschools last year. This year it runs 135.
Will Riga still pay for a private kindergarten?
Yes, but only as plan B. Right now Riga parents can pick a private kindergarten and the city pays its share anyway, even when a city spot was free. That habit grew out of the years when Riga had waiting lists.
The law never asked for that much. Under the Education Law, a council only has to pay for a private place when it can’t give a child aged 1.5 or older, with a declared address in its territory, a place in one of its own kindergartens, as the Ministry of Smart Administration and Regional Development spells out.
“Now there are no queues,” Nagla said. Under the new rules, the city fills its own places first, and co-funding kicks in only when it can’t.
One more twist could come too. Nagla said Riga may bring in kindergarten catchment areas, so at least one of your three picks would have to be near your declared address. The point is to stop parents applying only to the most packed city kindergartens just to land the private-school money. So where you declare your address would matter even more, and with Riga apartment prices up 10% this year, moving closer to a good kindergarten isn’t cheap.
How much does Riga pay now?
Under a council decision in January, the city pays €501.91 a month for each child aged 1.5 to 4 at a co-funded private kindergarten, and €351.98 in the compulsory preschool years at 5 and 6. That covers international preschool programmes too, not just Latvian-language ones. The city keeps a list of the private kindergartens it co-funds.
Why now?
Fewer babies. Births in Latvia have dropped by almost a third in seven years, and Riga’s city kindergartens have about 1,500 fewer kids than they did this spring. Not long ago the city was short of places. Now it’s closing kindergartens and cutting groups. Spare rooms get other uses for now and can turn back into groups if numbers climb again.
Private kindergartens feel it first. Daina Kājiņa, who chairs the Latvian Private Preschool Association, told Latvian Radio she estimates that three or four private preschools close every year, and that’s only counting her association’s members. The private kindergarten Čība shuts on 1 November after its roll fell from 30 kids to seven. Kājiņa wants one national set of rules for how councils work with private kindergartens, so families aren’t left guessing.
Got a toddler and a private kindergarten in mind for next autumn? Put three city kindergartens on your application, and keep one close to home.
Pictured: Riga preschool No. 66 in Skanste, a short walk from Skonto Stadium, which Invego is buying.
Photo: Skanste Development Agency / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
