Ensuring Sufficient Numbers of Pre-school Centres and Childcare Teachers

Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar asked the Minister for Social and Family Development (a) what is the progress on the establishment of 200 new childcare centres across Singapore; and (b) whether sufficient qualified and trained pre-school teachers are ready to be deployed to these childcare centres.

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked the Minister for Social and Family Development (a) how many childcare centres in Nee Soon GRC do not operate at full capacity and how many more teachers are required for these centres to be operated in full capacity; (b) in the past one year, how many teachers have (i) been recruited through the Early Childhood Career and Education Fair; (ii) taken up the Traineeship Programme for the Early Childhood Sector run by WDA; and (c) whether there are any other new initiatives to address the manpower shortage in the early childhood care sector.

The Minister for Social and Family Development and Second Minister for Defence (Mr Chan Chun Sing): Madam, may I have your permission to take Question Nos 13 and 14 together?

Mdm Speaker: Yes, please.

Mr Chan Chun Sing: Madam, our target is to add 200 new centres, or about 20,000 additional childcare places, from 2013 to 2017. We are on track to achieve this. Over the past two years, 17,000 new childcare places have been added.

On average, child-care centres in Yishun and Sembawang housing estates operated at about 90% of their capacity in 2014. This is typical for centres with sufficient staff. ECDA closely monitors childcare centre demand and will continue to expand capacity in estates with many young families to meet their needs.

To further expand capacity, we will need to attract and retain good early childhood professionals. ECDA has taken measures to support this. For example, ECDA organised an Early Childhood Career and Education Fair in 2014 which helped to fill over 200 positions. It also worked with the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) to launch a traineeship programme to give mid-career entrants an introduction to the Early Childhood sector. Fifty trainees have completed the programme to-date.

More recent initiatives include the introduction of a new ECDA Fellows programme to provide good performing Early Childhood professionals opportunities to take on sector-level leadership roles, as well as a new training award for Institute of Technical Education (ITE) students undertaking the Higher Nitec in Early Childhood Education.

ECDA will continue to work with the sector to put in place structured career pathways and develop early childhood professionals. Together, these initiatives will help us attract and retain the manpower we need for the sector.

Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar (Ang Mo Kio): Madam, I thank the Minister for the reply. May I just find out from the Minister, he did mentioned in an earlier Parliamentary Question (PQ) in a different parliamentary sitting that the attrition rate of trained preschool teachers is quite high – it is about 50%. Have you managed to bring this number down?

My second question is: I do hear from some preschool operators' principals that it is not easy to get teachers to join the sector even though there are programmes in place. What is the progress of, for example, the traineeship programme for Early Childhood sector? Are we able to attract stay-at-home mothers, retirees or mid-career entrants to join the sector in order to make up for the shortage of teachers in this sector?

Mr Chan Chun Sing: Mdm Speaker, yes, we have been working hard to bring down the attrition rate. We have a four-pronged strategy to reduce the attrition rate. First, it starts from the selection process. We are instituting new measures to make sure that people who come on-board to take the courses are generally interested in the Early Childhood sector and not just take up the course and subsequently leave for another sector.

Number two: we are continuing to make sure that we encourage the anchor operators to lead by example to help pull the sector along when it comes to fair remuneration for our teachers.

Number three: we want to put in a professional development pathway for all our teachers, especially in the early years, which is why we have instituted a mentorship programme to guide the young teachers, especially in the critical first three years of their career development.

Last, but not least, the fourth prong in our strategy: to make sure that that we continue to attract and retain good teachers is to have the community and all of us work together to give the sense of respect to our Early Childhood sector professionals.

On the Member's second question on the traineeship: yes, we are seeing a gradual increase in the take-up rate and we have also started some pilot programme to allow stay-at-home moms who are prepared to work part-time to come in and join the sector as edu-carers. And Member Er Dr Lee Bee Wah would know, in her constituency, she has managed to help us place a few of these stay-at-home moms who came back to join us on a part-time basis to supplement the edu-carer manpower pool within the Yishun area.

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah: Thank you, Mdm Speaker. In my Nee Soon South, I have 109 new BTO blocks and about 60% of the occupants have shifted in. The fact that every week, I have residents coming to MPS to ask for a place in a childcare centre shows that there are inadequate childcare places.

I would like to ask the Minister: I understand that the Ministry has been working very hard to build more childcare centres, to recruit teachers, but then, there must be a certain timeframe that the parents can look forward to settling down in their new home, getting their children from their old place to the new place. Is there any framework that the Ministry is looking at?

And the next question is student care. I also have residents bringing up the issue of student care. Is this under MSF? If not, is MSF going to work with MOE on student care centres?

Mr Chan Chun Sing: Mdm Speaker, indeed, for all the new towns, what we aim to do is to make sure that the space allocated and required for the childcare centres are in-built and designed into the new buildings. For the new precincts, we have worked with MND to make sure that these places are already inside, so we do not need to go and look for void deck spaces. During the forthcoming Committee of Supply debate, I will reveal more details on other ways that we will alleviate the shortfall in the childcare places for those precincts that had already been built and may not have sufficient void deck space.

For student care, the issue will be dealt with collectively between MOE and MSF. We are fully aware that today, the lifestyle needs of the many families have changed. Many of the families have dual-income parents working and what they need for childcare places today will, at least, majority of them will translate into the same need for the lower primary student care and upper primary student care places. MOE has a plan in place to expand the student care services available to all the primary schools progressively.