Regional education system: development characteristics, competitive environment and the need for state support

Introduction

The establishment of market relations and the formation of civil society has placed the sphere of education in a new modus operandi.

In the conditions of the present-day educational system, preschool educational institutions are becoming increasingly free in the selection of content, methods and means of children’s development. Society is facing new opportunities for running different types of kindergartens, introduction of innovative educational technologies and specialised authorial programmes. Therefore, it is extremely important today to view the educational environment in terms of its efficiency and development potential and to try to prognosticate its impact on various categories of educational process participants.

This mission is relevant nowadays, since the sphere of education is the basis for human development; one can not develop without going through this domain. One of the present development strategies is the partnership of preschool organisations with parents, competent organisation of a constructive dialogue in the interests of children’s development, preservation and strengthening of their health.

The purpose of sociological research in respect of kindergartens and work with parents of preschool children is the analysis of educational institutions’ activity results, issues of staff motivation, staff policy and its orientation at providing high-quality preschool education meeting the present-day requirements and the challenges of our time. In addition, such studies make it possible to assess the extent of consistency of strategies and legislative changes in preschool education with the parents’ needs and the realities of social development.

Questioning of kindergarten children’s parents is interesting in that it allows the consumers to give a primary assessment of results of the efforts to improve the educational environment, to introduce new educational standards and to secure availability of preschool education, as well as to evaluate the parents’ costs in the sphere of preschool education, those not taken into account by the official statistics.

Literature Review

The main purpose of the Russian educational policy in recent years was to ensure the modern quality of education while maintaining its fundamental nature and compliance with the current and future needs of an individual, society and the state. The existing system of preschool education in Russia is a multifunctional network of preschool educational institutions (hereinafter referred to as the PEIs), which is focused on the needs of society and the provision of various educational services, considering age-related and individual characteristics of child development. The problems, existing in the field of preschool education are Russian-wide: the lack of places in the PEIs and, as a result, high competition for childcare places; the problem of financing preschool educational institutions (Lashkova, 2013; Migunova, 2013; Voloshina, 2012).

Considering the experience in managing preschool education in the Krasnodar Region, it is possible to determine the main fields of development and forms of state support that may be of interest to other regions of the Russian Federation. Modern Russia lacks the mechanisms for a complex quantitative assessment of the PEIs' activities; the assessment is implemented mainly using the method of expert estimates. In this case, only certain aspects of the PEIs' activities are evaluated: the quality of children's life and health protection, the quality of educational results, the quality of development, human resources, material and technical support. Education management specialists and institution managers can only compare the PEIs based on this disperse data. However, there are numerous studies on comprehensive assessment of the PEIs' activities conducted by foreign authors (Burchinal, Vandergrift, Pianta, & Mashburn, 2010; Burchinal et al., 2014; Hatfield, Burchinal, Pianta, & Sideris, 2016; Leyva et al., 2015; Weiland, Ulvestad, Stad, & Yoshikawa, 2013).

In view of the modernization of educational activities in Russia, the quality requirements for education have changed – the development of new tools for studying the preschool education quality is becoming particularly important. The quality assessment system for preschool education involves multidimensional analysis of the PEIs' activities, since the very concept of the "quality of the educational process" is understood differently by each participant           (Li et al, 2019).

The preschool education system today should be considered as one of the factors for the improvement of the demographic situation in the country since the birth rate increase is impossible without provision of citizens with a guaranteed child's admission to a PEI (Morabito et al, 2018; Proulx, and Aboud, 2019). The system of preschool education provides children with equal starting opportunities regardless of their place of residence, state of health, and social status of their parents. The main challenge facing preschool education is to satisfy the needs of the population in the modern services of preschool education, and these needs are constantly growing.

Today, private preschool support in Russia is presented in various forms: private, home and family kindergartens, centers for additional preschool education, leisure centers, family education centers, babysitters, governesses, etc. These kinds of activities are usually registered as commercial and non-commercial legal forms of legal entities, individual entrepreneurship without the formation of a legal entity. There is an illegal sector, formed by dishonest entrepreneurs or parents themselves from the hopelessness of the situation. State and municipal statistics currently do not provide a complete and complex picture of supply in the market of preschool educational services, its real activity, development factors and impact on the social life of the city or region. Special research based on surveys of private entrepreneurs in the field of preschool support and collection of information about individual organizations is of significant assistance in this case.

The development of the private sector of the preschool education services provision is very promising and beneficial for both municipalities and the region, because:

1. it does not require the construction of new kindergartens and the corresponding budgetary expenses;
2. it contributes to addressing the following issues: reducing the shortage of places in the PEIs; employment; development of small and medium enterprises; development of competition in the market for preschool education services; restructuring of the public sector.

At present, the legislative division of activities in preschool education into "education" and "nursing and childcare" has expanded the possibilities of non-state kindergartens and private kindergarten groups.

At the federal level, the necessary regulatory legal framework for state support of non-state forms of preschool education has been formed, which allows creating conditions for the emergence of new and legalization of unregistered individual entrepreneurs in the field of preschool education at the regional level. Thus, the non-governmental sector of preschool education can and should be considered as one of the possible mechanisms for solving the problem of ensuring access to education for preschool children.

At the regional level, conditions are being created for the development of preschool education in non-governmental organizations.

Despite the availability of numerous scientific publications in the area under consideration, the essential theoretical and applied aspects of the chosen scientific problem remain insufficiently developed and controversial: a methodological approach to the study of the mechanism of a complex quantitative assessment of the preschool educational institutions activities; the levels of government participation in the provision of quality preschool educational.

Managing the quality of education requires information that is relevant to the current true state of affairs in the field of preschool education, and one of the conditions for ensuring relevance is considered to be a combination of external and internal assessments of the educational institution (Kaigermazova and Sultanova, 2015).

The study is based on the concept of developing education, which has found its development regarding pre-school education in the works of Russian scientists Saprykina, Lashko, Klochko, Yarushkina, Chumakova, & Bugaenko (2016), Golubkina, Nekrasova, & Kolyada (2015), Kuznetsova  (2010, 2012), Mamaeva, & Matsko (2013).

The object of study herein is the system of preschool education, the subject of study is the main indicators characterizing the level of development of preschool education in the Krasnodar Region.

The objectives of the study conducted by the authors involve:

• to examine the situation in the regional educational services market;
• to assess the residents' satisfaction with educational services provided by the preschool educational institutions of the region;
• to evaluate the development of a competitive environment in the regional market of educational services;
• to propose the measures for state authorities to support the development of competition in the educational services market of the region.

The scientific hypothesis of the study includes the following interrelated assumptions:

• the formation of human capital begins in the early stages of personality development, which sets an important challenge for researchers to constantly monitor the development of the regional educational market; such monitoring will allow assessing its development, the state of the competitive environment, and the need for state support;
• the functioning in the educational market of private preschool educational institutions forms their needs for various types of support from public authorities.

Methodology

At the first stage of the study, the authors used methods of systemic, monographic, structural and logical research to determine certain development features of the regional education system, the state of its competitive environment, and the need for state support.

At the second stage, they revealed the development features of the regional education system, based on the results of earlier scientific studies (Klochko & Arutyunova, 2018) and statistical data of the Krasnodar Statistical Yearbook (Kurnyakova, 2018), using the system and structural-logical methods of research.
At the final stage, in the fall of 2018, they conducted a sociological study, in which they examined two samples of respondents. The conducted study made it possible to evaluate both the development of competition in the studied market of educational services and the degree of the Krasnodar Region residents' satisfaction with the quality of services provided by the preschool organizations and their marketability in the municipalities.

The first sample included 293 people from different regions and towns of the Krasnodar Region. The respondents who participated in the survey were the representatives of the business community of the Krasnodar Region, which includes business owners and heads of business entities (organizations), regardless of the legal form. Most of the respondents were regular employees (37.9%) or middle managers (29%). Whereas 19.8% of the respondents were business owners and 13.3% were senior executives.

The second sample included 58 residents of the Krasnodar city. The questionnaire used closed-ended questions. The sample included consumers of preschool education services, which were distributed by gender as follows: 87.9% of the respondents were women, 12.1% of the respondents were men. All respondents had children, more than half of the respondents had one child – 58.9%, 37.5% of the respondents had two children, and 3.6% had three or more children.

Microsoft Excel software package and SPSS Statistics were used to process the initial information.

Results and Discussion

To ensure the high quality of preschool education services and further development of the education system in accordance with the state program, the researchers analyzed the main indicators characterizing the development of the preschool education system in the Krasnodar Region, in particular, the distribution of pupils in the preschool educational institutions.

In the market of preschool education, there are 1,526 preschool educational institutions (PEI), which provide educational services to 280.8 thousand children as of 01.01.2019. (Table 1)

Table 1.
Preschool educational organizations of the Krasnodar Region (as of the end of the year)

Development of the private preschool educational organizations and the growth in the number of children in such organizations should become the basic development goals in this market.

To satisfy population with the preschool education services, there are 167 municipal preschool educational institutions and 22 non-state preschool educational institutions in the territory of the Krasnodar city municipality as of 01.01.2019 (Table 2).

Table 2.
The number of preschool educational institutions in the Krasnodar Region, pcs.

The competitive environment in the field of preschool education services is characterized by the dominance of municipal educational institutions. The number of preschool educational organizations by cities and regions of the territory is presented in Table 3. The districts are grouped in the table by the number of preschool educational institutions located in the district.

Table 3.
The number of preschool educational organizations by city and region, pcs.

Analyzing the data in Table 3 over six years, the following can be analyzed:

• in nineteen districts out of forty-four there is a reduction in the number of preschool educational institutions;
• in fifteen districts out of forty-four there is an increase in the number of preschool educational institutions;
• in ten districts of forty-four, the number of preschool educational institutions remains unchanged.

Thus, it can be analyze  that despite the growth of the region's population, the increase in the number of preschool educational institutions is proceeding at a slow pace. Whereas, in some areas, it has not changed at all in six years. Furthermore, an increase or decrease in the number of preschool educational organizations does not exceed one or two units. In general, it is possible to state an insufficient number of preschool educational organizations in all regions of the Krasnodar Region, which causes demand for the services of private preschool educational organizations or forces the PEIs management to increase the number of groups or the number of children in groups, which does not contribute to the quality of preschool education services.

A survey of entrepreneurs of the Krasnodar Region providing preschool educational services in the fall of 2018 showed the following. To increase competitiveness in the market, the respondents most often train their personnel – 56.5%, take no actions – 19.3% and reduce the cost of educational services – 14.9%. The competition in the Krasnodar Region was assessed by the entrepreneurs as follows: moderate – 31.1%, high – 18.8%, zero competition – 24.2%.

More than half of the respondents (51.2%) believe that competition creates incentives for business development, only 15.7% believe that it does not create them, 14% say that it is impossible to unambiguously assess the role of competition as an incentive, and 19.1% found it difficult to answer.

The opinion of the entrepreneurs on the change in the number of competitors is contradictory: more than a third of respondents (38.5%) believe that there have been no changes, 31.3% are sure that the number of competitors has increased, 24.4% found it difficult to answer and 5.7% noted a decrease in the number of competitors.

According to the entrepreneurs, the main reason for the increase in the number of competitors in the market is the emergence of new Russian competitors – 31%. A significant number of respondents (36.8%) chose the option "other". At the same time, 26.3% of the respondents consider changes in the regulatory framework as the reason for increased competition.

The uncertainty in the assessments is due to the fact that the respondents were mainly ordinary employees rather than business owners, which undoubtedly leaves its mark on the perception of the educational services market in the Krasnodar Region.

One of the leaders in the increasing number of preschool educational institutions is the city of Krasnodar. In the fall of 2018, the authors surveyed the Krasnodar residents who use services of the private preschool educational institutions. Private preschool educational institutions were chosen by the researchers to compare with municipal preschool educational institutions, as their main competitors, providing educational services of a wider range. The data provided through the survey are shown below. Most of the respondents noted that they needed the services of preschool organizations, mainly private kindergartens (84.5%). More than half of the respondents noted a certain degree of satisfaction with the provision of kindergartens in their locality: 43.9% were fully satisfied, 31.6% were partially satisfied, and 24.6% were unsatisfied with this system.

Assessing the availability of preschool education in the city of Krasnodar, the respondents were inclined to believe that non-governmental organizations are more accessible (72%), while 25% of respondents said that state and municipal organizations of preschool education in the city are inaccessible.

When evaluating a preschool institution on a 5-point scale, the respondents gave priority to organization of events – 5 points; the following features were equally significant: tactfulness and culture of behavior of teachers with parents, the ability of educators to answer parents' questions during conversations and meetings, the attitude of the kindergarten teaching staff towards children and parents, the sanitary condition of the premises and territory of the kindergarten – 4.9 points.

Indicating the main forms of participation in the life of the PEI, the respondents primarily noted the following forms: presence at parent meetings – 53.3%, active discussion during parent meetings – 40% and preparing gifts for children during the holidays – 35.6%. To a lesser extent, the respondents participate in the design of the PEI premises for the holidays –13.3%.

Noting things, that they would like to change at the moment in the preschool institution, the majority of respondents chose the following options: reducing the cost of services (51.3%), using new forms of interaction with parents – 35.9%, improving the material base – 25.6% and the quality of education and training – 20.5%.

The questionnaire provided an opportunity for the respondents to express their opinion in an open form regarding whether there is a difference in the choice of the PEI (private or municipal). The answers are given as they are, without alteration:

• it's better in private one, only the price is too high;
• the difference is not in the cost of the kindergarten, but in the number of children in groups and the attention paid to them;
• I would choose a private one because in a private one the approach to children is individual;
• there are too many children in the municipal one;
• the number of children in the group is of great importance;
• the individual approach to the child;
• the number of children in the municipal kindergarten is 46 people;
• private is better than municipal;
• I don't like the conditions in municipal kindergartens;
• private kindergarten is preferable;
• the advantage of private kindergartens is in a small number of children in a group, there are a lot of children in municipal kindergartens;
• difference: the number of children in the group, the attitude of a teacher, only private;
• in particular, the possibility of contracting diseases is much lower, an individual approach to the child;
• private kindergarten is preferable, because of smaller groups and better services.

The scientific hypothesis was fully confirmed in the course of the study:

• the data obtained from the survey showed that the monitoring of the vital issues of private educational organizations allows obtaining the necessary information from the state authorities, which makes it possible to get a complete picture of its specific development, the state of the competitive environment, and to assess the need for state support;
• the private preschool educational organizations are the most vulnerable compared to municipal educational organizations, and require a wide range of state support for them. When providing state support, it is necessary to consider its systemic nature, which involves not only "targeted assistance" to individual organizations but also the solution of systemic problems in the educational environment, which in turn implies the involvement of state authorities at all levels of government, from the municipal to the federal level.

The analysis revealed that in the context of increasingly fierce competition in the market for preschool education services. There is a need to create and maintain a unique trade offer giving the possibility to win the competition.

The results obtained allow concluding the following:

1. The main problem of the preschool education market in the Krasnodar Region is the market monopolization by municipal preschool institutions in conditions of a significantly excessing "demand" over "supply". Despite the positive assessments of the competitive environment development expressed by the respondents, the situation needs to be addressed and improvement of the competitive environment in the regional market of educational services should be made.
2. The Krasnodar Region uses production, administrative and market approaches, which involves the construction of new preschool institutions with their subsequent maintenance and the involvement of non-state suppliers in the provision of services, for the development of the regional system of preschool education. The study showed that budgetary funds are mainly directed to the construction and repair of municipal kindergartens, and not to attract non-state suppliers. The creation of a private childcare place is ten times cheaper than in the municipal PEI.
3. To develop the preschool educational market in the Krasnodar Region and the related competition, as well as to increase the availability of preschool education services in the region, the state authorities must:

• determine the list of services traded in the market; describe the content of these services and their resource provision; set the priorities among the services; specify the state obligations to provide these services for all or for certain categories of citizens;
• create a system of accounting for unmet needs (the database on the needs for preschool education services) for each municipality, which should include all preschool children (and not just those in the queue), as well as disabled children, indicating their pathologies; provide for annual updating of the system and ensuring access for all interested parties to it;
• create a system for the development of entrepreneurship in the field of preschool education, which includes the exercise of the powers defined in the federal and regional legislation, as well as the opportunities provided by federal executive bodies to promote federal policy in the country's regions.

In the course of studying the publications on the issues connected with the regional educational system operation, it is necessary to note that most of all these publications are of general theoretical nature or focus on highly specialised matters.

Many studies of the preschool education market pay due attention to the specific features of pedagogical activity. In particular, Voloshina (2012) considers the preschool education system as a multifunctional variable network of preschool educational institutions focused on the needs of the society and the family and representing a diverse range of educational services taking into account the age and individual characteristics of a child’s development. At the same time, in her opinion, the core of new approaches to preschool education relies on the principles of its variability, openness, cultural congruence, individualisation, as well as the accord of educational and developmental goals and objectives, the preschooler’s cognising the world through the activities of interest, the introduction of a quality management system. All of this in the aggregate should ensure the child’s full-fledged preschool childhood. This approach in general coincides with the first part of the scholarly hypothesis of our research, which states that the formation of human capital is engendered at the early stages of personal development. Some of Voloshina’s ideas regarding the competence-based development of the personality were useful for the authors of the given research.

Quite often, the preschool educational institutions market is outside the scientific query of researchers who consider the main stages of personality development as starting from school or university. The authors found the study by Mamaeva and Matsko (2013), addressing the issues of competition in the educational services market, to be of specific interest. However, the components of competitive environment analysis and the indicators of competitive position of an educational institution are considered as a case of 2012 admission to Omsk region universities, with the use of statistical analysis. Regretfully, this does not reflect the complete picture of personality formation and the role of preschool education in it. In our opinion, this omission results in overlooking some quite important issues of the regional educational market operation – in particular, the extent of satisfying the region residents’ needs in educational services provided by preschool educational institutions of the region, the trends of competitive environment development in the regional market of educational services, etc.

The competitive environment formation issues are partially considered in the paper by Kaigermazova and Sultanova (2015) who believe that the development of non-governmental kindergartens as a special sector is a stimulus for further development of the preschool education sphere. These authors propose a number of measures to enhance the efficiency of private preschool institutions: mitigation of administrative barriers, a state programme compensating some part of parents’ expenses in paying for a private kindergarten, stimulation of lending to this area of business, legalisation of private preschool institutions, in particular, the family kindergarten, child temporary stay centres, etc. Kaigermazova and Sultanova’s proposals were taken into account by the authors of this article in developing the measures for socio-economic policy aimed at the formation of the market-type municipal economy in the region.

It should be noted that the issues connected with the regional development of the educational market are seldom considered in scientific essays due to the specificity of the object of research. However, the existing papers, if any, are in fact narrowly targeted. For instance, Golubkina et al. (2015) discuss the problem areas of management of preschool institutions in Krasnodar Territory. Regretfully, although the cited paper covered the same region as the one considered in our research, it is mainly devoted to the use of specialised informational systems in managing preschool institutions and does not dwell upon any other issues of state regulation of the regional market herein explored, or competitive development in that market that would result in improved quality of the provided educational services.

Thus, despite the variety of scientific publications devoted to the subject of the present research, only few of them partially delve into the problem area considered herein in the systemic dimension.

Conclusions

Summing up the results of this study, the authors note that despite the work carried out by the state authorities of the Krasnodar Region to increase the number of preschool educational organizations and their improvement, the region still needs to increase the number of preschool educational institutions, which is due to the population growth both in urban settlements and in the countryside.

The authors' contribution to the scientific field studying the regional market for educational services is as follows:

• using a sociological study, the authors examined the "narrow" issues of the regional market for educational services development, which had not been reflected in the scientific research of other scientists due to the specifics of the study conducted by the authors;
• defined the degree of the residents' satisfaction with educational services provides by the regional pre-school educational institutions of the region;
• assessed the development of a competitive environment in the regional market of educational services;
• revealed the differences in the municipal and private preschool educational institutions according to consumers of educational services were;
• suggested measures to support the development of competition in the educational services market of the region for the region's management bodies.

Undoubtedly, the study presented herein promotes the scientific direction on the problem of studying regional educational systems, as it considers a wide range of issues that were previously ignored by economists, especially in terms of specifics of the competitive environment development in this educational market.

According to authors, despite a small number of studies devoted to this issue, the regional educational system is developing similarly to all types of regional systems, in the light of globalization trends and tendencies, when human and intellectual capitals become the main types of capital in the economy that should be constantly cultivated and developed.

In the future, the authors plan to specify the recommendations presented in this article for state authorities, which will enhance the development of the competitive environment in the regional educational services market and increase the degree of consumer satisfaction with the preschool educational services provided in the region, which, according to the authors, will be of interest to specialists, involved in the study of regional educational systems.