Shaanxi Province is taken as a sample in this research. It is in West China and had a large population of more than 37 million people and the rural population is nearly 18 million in 2014. Since Chinese Central Government announced to basically popularize preschool education in China in 2010, Shaanxi Provincial Government has issued a series of laws and regulations, including Opinions of the People’s Government of Shaanxi Province on the Development of Preschool Education, Action Plan for Three Years of Pre-school Education in Shaanxi Province (2011-2013), Some Provisions on Accelerating the Development of Preschool Education. Six important measures have been put into effect, such as expanding preschool education resources, establishing a leading group for preschool, increasing financial investment, recruiting and training teachers, strengthening the management of kindergartens’ access, fees and security and providing subsidies for poor children. After nearly five years’ hard work, now remarkable effects have been achieved. There were 3928 kindergartens in 2010 while 6356 kindergartens in 2013. Public kindergartens accounted for 32.4% of all sorts of kindergartens in 2014. In 2011-2013, nearly 1.20 billion ¥ was invested in preschool education and public fiscal pre-school education spending accounted for 4.82% of public financial education spending in Shaanxi Province in 2013. There are 39,965 teachers in private kindergartens and 14,134 teachers in public kindergartens while 15,749 teachers in private kindergartens and 4391 teachers in public kindergartens in 2009. Thousands of kindergarten principals and teachers received free training. The children’s gross enrollment ratio of three-year preschool reached 94.64% in 2014 while 64.18% in 2010.

In order to acquire full-scale information, three cities with different levels of economic development in Shaanxi Province have been chosen as samples. They are X City, Y City and W City. According to the official information about the levels of per capital GDP in Shaanxi Province, X City is the second highest of the ten regions in Shaanxi Province and Y City the third, W City the eighth. Different urban areas, counties and towns have been chosen from the three cities as samples. Kindergartens and parents from these kindergartens have been chosen from these different cities, urban areas, counties and towns. The details about samples are in the following Table 1 and Table 2.

In April 2015, Chinese Ministry of Education was eager to know how is the progress of preschool education in China after the law National Medium and Long-term Plan for Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) in China started to be implemented in 2010, so they decided to entrust some universities as a third party to evaluate the preschool education. Questionnaires were made to evaluate the progress of preschool education by authoritative experts from over ten famous Normal Universities in China and the questionnaires’ reliability and validity were tested. The questionnaire used in this research is one of these questionnaires. The questionnaire consists of three parts. The first part is about basic materials. It includes background information about children and their parents, and information about selecting a kindergarten and tuition fees. The second part is the main part, which is about parents’ satisfaction evaluation of preschool education. This part mainly consists of four parts: government valuing preschool education, availability, affordability and quality of preschool, which respectively include 1, 10, 6 and 23 questions. Five-point Likert scoring method is adopted in these forty questions. The third part is about parents’ expectation which includes six open questions to investigate parents’ expectations on preschool education.

Parents’ satisfaction evaluation, of preschool education includes four parts: government valuing preschool education, availability of preschool, affordability of preschool and quality of preschool. The details about these are in the following.

Parents were selected from sample kindergartens and they include fathers, mothers and grandparents. Children are 3 - 6 years old. Basic information about selecting a kindergarten were gathered because it can give supplement and verification to parents’ satisfaction evaluation of preschool education. They can provide some information about availability, affordability of preschool and prove whether difficult admission and expensive admission exist. The following is about information about selecting a kindergarten and tuition fees.

Government should consider the needs, wishes and expectations of the parents in the process of policy making. Their needs, wishes and expectations can provide some useful cues for solving problems about difficult admission, expensive admission and low quality of preschool. In this part, parents express their various needs, wishes and expectations. Of all the six questions, high frequency words are chosen and their frequency of occurrence is written down in the following.

1) Great difficulties: disobedient (89), naughty (65), bad-tempered (54), capricious (51), active (31); educate (145), cultivate (47), manage (24), instruct (23), discipline (8); communicate (77), exchange ideas (19).

2) The most desired support and help that parents want to get: teacher(s) (356), faculty (3); educate (199), communicate (101), help (94), cultivate (63).

3) The most satisfying improvement parents want to get: teacher(s) (863), faculty (24); patient (164), goodhearted (107), enthusiastic (106), care for children (104); patient (164), goodhearted (107), enthusiastic (106), care for children (104).

4) The most dissatisfying aspects that parents reflect: pick-up (55), school bus (29), far (13); teacher(s) (86), faculty (2); environment (33), too many children (15), playground (13), small space (9).

5) Further improvement that parents reflect: teacher(s) (136), faculty (16); facilities (93), plaything (30), hardware (25); environment (56), classroom (13), playground (10), room (9), place (4).

6) Policies that parents expect to be implemented: subsidies (95), tuition fees (57), charges (37), investment (53), funds (6); teacher(s) (182), faculty (31); kindergarten (212), private kindergarten (59), public kindergarten (50).

Whether the government attaches great importance to the development of preschool education is very important for solving the problems about difficult admission, expensive admission and low quality of preschool. It can be seen from Table 3 that evaluation value from parents in Shaanxi Province reach 4.06, and standard deviation is not out of normal conditions, which shows that parents unanimously feel more satisfactory. It shows that governments at all levels in Shaanxi Province have performed their duties well.

Availability of preschool is an important indicator to whether difficult admission exists and how severe it is. It can be seen from Table 4 that numbers of kindergartens, kindergarten selection, accessibility of kindergarten, kindergarten selection of children of non-native residents and pick up and delivery service in kindergarten scored under 4.0 and reach nearly the level of more satisfactory, while the four other indicators, namely meeting demand of selecting a kindergarten, kindergarten selection of rural migrant workers’ children, distance from kindergarten and transportation of picking up a child scored over 4.0, the level of more satisfactory, and standard deviation is not out of normal conditions. It shows that difficult admission exist slightly and laws and measures governments at all levels in Shaanxi Province enacted and adopted are effective.

Affordability of preschool is also an important indicator to know about the problems about expensive admission. The data in Table 5 show that all the indicators scored over 4.0, and standard deviation is not out of normal conditions, which can declare that parents from Shaanxi Province unanimously feel more satisfactory. It can be concluded that expensive admission is not severe now and laws and measures governments at all levels in Shaanxi Province enacted and adopted are effective.

Quality of preschool education is the key indicator to weigh the development level of preschool education in Shaanxi Province. It can be seen from Table 6, Table 7, Table 8 and Table 9 that all the 22 indicators scored over 4.0, and standard deviation is not out of normal conditions, which shows that parents from Shaanxi Province unanimously feel more satisfactory. This shows that quality problems have been improved a lot in the kindergartens. Children can share preschool education with basic quality.

From Table 10, it can reveal that as a whole, parents from Shaanxi Province unanimously feel more satisfactory with availability, affordability, and quality of preschool because each of them scored over 4.0 and standard deviation is not out of normal conditions. Great progress has been made in solving problems about difficult admission, expensive admission and low quality of preschool in Shaanxi Province.

Difficulties, paths and time of selecting a kindergarten and tuition fees can provide some supplement and verification information about admission of preschool.

In the question about difficulties of selecting a kindergarten (see Table 11), 16.6 percent of parents think it easiest, 20.9 percent easier, 46.1 percent answer “Don’t know”, 14.2 percent more difficult and 2.2 percent most difficult. The mean of difficulties scored 3.36 and standard deviation is 0.99. All this shows that selecting a kindergarten for a parent is not difficult. This also indicates admission of a kindergarten is not very difficult.

In Table 12, paths of selecting a kindergarten can be seen. 58.8 percent of parents state that their children can enter a kindergarten if sign up, 23.7 percent of parents think that their children enter a kindergarten by interviewing, 12.9 percent by asking for help, 4.6 percent by going to Kids and Mum Class in advance. From these facts we can conclude that admission of a kindergarten is not very difficult.

Time of selecting a kindergarten is an important indicator to indicate the fierce competition level of selecting a kindergarten. Data from Table 13 show that 70.8 percent of parents decide to select a kindergarten for their children when they are 2 - 3 years old. This demonstrates that selecting a kindergarten in Shaanxi Province is not difficult and admission of a kindergarten is not very difficult.

Tuition fees affect admission of a kindergarten a lot. It can be concluded from Table 14 that 60.4 percent of parents paid more actual tuition fees than tuition fees expected per month. Only 8.6 percent of parents paid fewer tuition fees than tuition fees expected per month. Data from Table 14 shows that most of parents in Shaanxi Province think tuition fees expensive. It seems that expensive admission is not well solved. More efforts should be intensified to solve this problem.

This part shows parents’ needs, wishes and expectations. It can be seen from high frequency words and their frequency of occurrence that the greatest difficulties parents are facing are that they can’t understand children’s characteristics of physiological and mental development and many of them don’t know how to educate their children and communicate with them. Because of these reasons, parents in Shaanxi Province are eager to get support and help from teachers and kindergartens and learn to how to educate and instruct their children.

Great changes have taken place since Chinese Central government and Shaanxi Provincial Government enacted many laws and regulations. Parents in Shaanxi Province think that the most satisfying aspects in kindergartens are the increasing numbers of teachers, quality of faculties and environment of kindergartens. Though many effective measures have been taken to boost the development of kindergartens, dissatisfying aspects still exist. Parents point out that the most dissatisfying aspects are picking up and delivery service, quality of environment, quantity and quality of faculties in kindergartens.

For the future improvement, parents hope to improve quantity and quality of faculties and environment. For the future policies, parents expect that Chinese Central government and governments at all levels in Shaanxi Province can increase input to build more public kindergartens, give more subsidies to the poor children, recruit more teachers and provide qualified teachers.