Two police officers count students getting off a school bus to see if it is overloaded in Xuwei district of Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, on Dec 17, 2011. [Photo by Mu Daoyong / for China Daily]

THE PROVINCIAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES of North China's Hebei province have issued an emergency notice on the management of school buses run by private kindergartens. Over the past two weeks four children in the province died after they were locked in school buses. West Metropolis Daily commented on Monday:

The lax management of local kindergartens, particularly the ones with questionable backgrounds, is to blame for the children's deaths. Of the kindergartens involved, only one has the necessary licenses. However, shutting them down for good is hardly a viable solution.

On the one hand, the properly licensed Hebei kindergarten also failed to double-check the school bus to make sure all the kids had got off, which led to the death of a 3-year-old. On the other, some parents might "knowingly" entrust their kids with preschools that are "not so good", because they have limited choices or financial capability.

The problems with kindergartens, whether overloaded school buses or poor management, point fundamentally to the insufficient supply of quality educational resources. The use of school buses by an increasing number of schools is indeed praiseworthy, but the frequency of school bus tragedies suggests that many school buses are not up to par and their drivers are not properly trained.

It is worth asking whether the local authorities have turned a blind eye to the many "illegal" kindergartens, or they were simply not aware of their existence until the accidents happened. Either way, their supervision of educational institutes is flawed and thus their care for local children is inadequate.