Currently Ha Noi has 650 public kindergartens, but Nguyen Thi Ngoc Bich, deputy director of Ha Noi's Department of Education and Training, said that the number met only 37 per cent of demand. Recently, the municipal People's Committee issued a project to universalise kindergarten education during the next five years.

Bich said this was part of a much broader and bigger VND3 trillion (S$0.2 billion) project to improve kindergarten education in Ha Noi by 2015. It targets having 85 per cent of five-year-olds attending public kindergartens by 2010-11. But Bich said that that this would still penalise children under five.

"To reach the target, public kindergartens give priority to 5-year-old children and thus there's less room in these schools for children of lower ages," she said.

Cuong said this was funny.

"We have to give the chance of accessing education to every single child but not giving priority to 5-year-old children and taking away the opportunities of those smaller in order to reach a goal set by the People's Committee," he said.

With the city's project, things may be about to get better, but there still appears to be a flaw in the official thinking on the subject - the lack of attention paid to the needs of children aged under five and their parents, many of whom have to work during the day.

The days of the long queues are certainly nowhere near over yet.

-Vietnam News/Asia News Network