As spring festival draws to a close, thousands of parents in Beijing are preparing for the daunting task of getting their child admitted to kindergarten. Every March sees registrations open for kindergarten and pre-kindergarten parent seminars in China. For many young parents with children of eligible age, 3 years old, registration means hours or days of queuing up outside the front gate of their chosen establishment, armed with food, tents and quilts.

Beijing is facing a massive imbalance in kindergarten supply and demand. According to statistics provided by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education, a total of 460,000 children were born in the capital in the last three years and 220,000 are now in kindergarten. That means, if no more kindergartens are built in the near future, half of these children will be left with no place to go.

Demographers attribute the situation to three main factors: the ever-growing influx of migrant workers to big cities, the drop in the number of non-profit nursery schools and the lack of government funding.

In newly developed areas like Huilongguan, Wangjing and Tongzhou in Beijing, the disparity is even greater. Many young couples have relocated to the new areas due to relatively cheaper housing prices, putting increased pressure on the already-strained system.

"The special population structure in newly developed areas requires more nursery schools," said Li Xin, a resident who lives in Huilongguan. "The government should facilitate the lives of young people by establishing more schools here."

Another factor that is overwhelming the system at present is the recent baby boom due to the popular Chinese zodiac years encouraging people to have children in "lucky" years. "Dog babies" (children who were born in the Year of the Dog in 2006), "Pig babies" (children born in 2007) and "Olympic babies" have resulted in even further pressure being placed on the capacity of infant schools in big metropolis like Beijing and Shanghai.

The issue was one of the hot topics at the recently concluded People's Congress of Beijing and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference of Beijing.

The Beijing municipal government has pledged to invest 30 million yuan ($4.39 million) to expand 30 public kindergartens, adding 12,000 extra places this year. In the following three years, the city will establish and expand 118 nursery schools to help leverage the strain on admissions.

Despite the promises, some local residents are trying to work out the problem by themselves. An online post in a forum of Yanqingyuan compound in Haidian district of Beijing attracted public attention last year. A resident surnamed Li called on her neighbors to invite bids to open a kindergarten in their own compound.

The first bidder was Mingtian Kindergarten Group who withdrew when they found out that no proper venue was available in the compound. Their successor, the 21st Century Experimental Kindergar-ten is a private one. Currently they are looking for the right site to build an infant school in the neighboring area.

Other parents are trying to stay one step ahead of the problem.

"My son was born in 2007 and will be 3 in September, but I registered last year," 20-something young mom Ding Yan told the Global Times.

"For people like me who were born in the baby boom in the 1980s, it's time for our kids to go kindergarten and every public institute I looked at is over booked."

"Apart from that, in order to get into a prestigious public kindergarten, the parents and kids have to attend a pre-school parent seminar together," Ding added. "The seminar can last from four months to a year. It is costly, about 1,000 yuan ($146) a month and is time consuming. What's more, there is even a long waiting list for the seminar."

High price tags for prestigious public nursery schools are also playing on the minds of parents. Some indicated that there is no standard where tuition fees are concerned and "donation fees" (an optional school fund that parents are "encouraged" to pay to guarantee their child's enrollment) are soaring.

"A neighbor of mine has to pay over 3,000 yuan ($439) in tuition fees each month. That is the average income for a common Beijing resident," Ding said.

"If my son is admitted to a first-class kindergarten near my home, I'll have to pay about 80,000 yuan ($11,713) in a one-off donation fee. It is much more expensive to support a pre-school child than a college student!"

"To tackle this problem, the government will release a new charging standard concerning public kindergartens based on a recent research," Zhang Xiaohong, an official with Beijing Municipal Commission of Education was quoted by the Beijing News as saying. "The tuition fee will be rated according to the government's evaluation of different kindergartens."

However, for parents who haven't planned ahead or don't have enough money for dona-tions, there is nothing left for them to do but camp outside the kindergarten gates and hope and wait.