EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION:

(Making it compulsory): 5.

Mrs Josephine Teo asked the Minister for Education whether there are plans to nationalise early childhood education and to make pre-primary education compulsory for all.

The Minister for Education (Dr Ng Eng Hen): Mr Speaker, Sir, we are committed to provide a high quality and appropriate pre-school education that is accessible to all Singaporeans. But we should avoid a system where pre-school education becomes extensions of our formal school systems. MOE therefore has no plans to nationalise early childhood education. There are valid educational reasons that support this approach.

The main focus in pre-school should primarily take into account the developmental needs of young children and provide age-appropriate programmes. Nationalising pre-schools to be part of the formal school system runs the risk of an over-emphasis on academic instruction and uniformity. It will increase pressure to accelerate pre-school children's numeracy and literacy skills at the expense of other developmental goals. This can be counter-productive, and dampen children's motivation and interest towards learning in the long run. Recently, a comprehensive review of primary school education undertaken by a group of researchers

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from the Cambridge University advocated raising the formal schooling age in England which is now at age five, to six or seven years old. Their reason is that this is to provide pre-school children with more time to establish positive attitudes to learning, confidence and social skills, as well as basic language skills.

This is also why education experts recommend that pre-schools focus on teaching children social skills such as learning to work and relate with one another, expressing their thoughts and ideas and building confidence. These educational goals can be accomplished through a variety of ways. Indeed, a nationalised pre-school sector would tend towards conformity which is not ideal. It would deprive parents the ability to choose from a variety of early childhood care and education models and operators that best fit the needs of their child.

MOE therefore intends to continue the present approach where we set only broad parameters rather than overly prescriptive guidelines for kindergarten education. We do want to ensure a baseline of quality in pre-school education while still preserving the diversity of options and models offered by the community and private sector.

Consistent with this broad approach, we will continue to raise the quality of pre-school education by requiring higher teacher qualifications and providing resources and guidelines on best practices. But MOE will not prescribe what all pre-school must teach as we acknowledge that there is no universally accepted or codified model for kindergarten education.

Our approach is consistent with other top-performing educational systems elsewhere, which too avoid starting formal or national school systems too early. Let me give some examples. In Finland which is a very high primary

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school education standard, children start formal education at age seven. Pre-school education is similarly not compulsory in Sweden. Closer home, from China to Hong Kong, Korea and Japan, pre-school education is neither compulsory nor organised as part of the formal school system.

However, we will ensure that pre-school remains accessible and affordable to all. In particular, children from lower-income households do receive targeted support through existing financial assistance schemes and community-based support from grassroots organisations, self-help groups and PCF kindergartens.

We have also increased pre-school participation by partnering community agencies to reach out children from lower income families. These efforts at first are led by the Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Mr Masagos. As a result of previous measures, we have reduced the percentage of children from lower and middle income households entering primary one without any pre-school education, from 5% in 2006 to about 2.4% in 2009. These outreach efforts will continue.

Mrs Josephine Teo (Bishan-Toa Payoh): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I also thank the Minister for his comprehensive reply. Two supplementary questions from me. Minister said that the Ministry was committed to making early childhood education accessible and affordable for Singaporeans. Would the Minister agree that the fees that parents have to pay now to early childhood educators are far higher than what has to be paid for primary school education and whether pre-primary education could be made as affordable as primary school education?

The second question relates to the Minister's point about increasing teachers' qualification. Does the Ministry also have a plan to help in the continuing education,

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training and career development for early childhood educators as a way of ensuring that in this sector, the quality of our teachers remains high and keeps up to the same standard that we have come to expect of our national school system?

Dr Ng Eng Hen: Mr Speaker, Sir, let me first touch on ensuring affordability. Indeed that is our main focus to ensure that it continues to be affordable to lower income families and middle income households. MOE provides targeted support and these measures were started over the last few years. Let me provide some examples. We are providing annual recurrent grants to kindergartens that meet our criteria and over the years, it has gone up. It started at $17 million a year and by 2013 it will go up to about $62 million a year. These grants to individual kindergartens that can meet the criteria – which are basically mainly for lower and middle income families – will help raise teacher quality as well as ensure that the fees are affordable. But in direct response to fees affordability for lower income families, let me remind the House that we have the Kindergarten Financial Assistance Scheme (KiFAS) and this is specifically intended to help lower income families. It defrays up to nearly 100% of fees at eligible kindergartens. And indeed, for needy families which cannot afford the initial expenses, for example, the registration fees, the books and the uniforms, they can also apply for a start-up grant of about $200 per child per year, this is what MCYS provides. And I know that Members also know that over and above this, many of our grassroots organisations – CCCs or self-help groups and PCF kindergartens – supplement these Government subsidies.

As for teacher quality, that again indeed is a focus of our efforts but as I said in our reply, we are not prescriptive in what you teach, we just want to raise the quality of pre-school teachers and we are moving it in steps. One, at the

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Government level – this is jointly steered by MOE and MCYS – which accredits diploma courses in order to improve the quality of training and trainers. We started the Pre-school Qualification Accreditation Committee in 2001. And in 2001, we set the minimum academic and professional qualifications to diploma requirement from January 2009. Over time, I see this increasing but we also have to pay to attract good teachers and I think that part of the grants, in a holistic manner, together with the raising of qualifications will attract better teachers into the pre-school sector.

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng (Jalan Besar): Thank you, Minister, for the answers. The Minister mentioned just now that nationalising pre-school education creates an over-emphasis on academic teaching at the expense of developmental goals of our young children. He also cited the example of the findings of a Cambridge survey that state that entering formal school too early will result in over-emphasis on academics. My question relates to our country's definition of what education is. Is it too narrow to define education as purely academic? Why cannot subjects like social skills, daily learning skills, moral education, inculcating good habits and even working in teams or play skills be incorporated in our definition of education? And let this good education be available so that children of different backgrounds can have equal access to this kind of quality pre-school education in our country.

Dr Ng Eng Hen: Indeed that is the approach. In other words, while we want to ensure that is accessible, we may not want to say that it is a uniformed programme. And I think there is richness in the diversity of providers. As in now, in the landscape, you have PCF kindergartens that provide a certain aspect.

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You have also faith-based kindergartens that provide a certain aspect. Once you nationalise it, there is always the tendency to compare one kindergarten to the other, go to the extreme of asking us to rank kindergartens, and how they perform and to then compare what teachers are – that is the tendency. And I would say, especially so, for Asian cultures because if you look at landscape of Asian countries, it is hugely competitive.

In Hong Kong, they register their children when they are pregnant for kindergarten. There is this great drive to want to start ahead. So, I think our focus is, one, to raise the teacher quality. Where it comes to affordability, to help lower and middle income households and make sure that it is affordable and to set general guidelines, broad parameters in the desired outcomes of education so to avoid this issue of trying to make children ready. If you make it accessible to all and there are opportunities, we would have provided a service for our citizens and allow them to develop at their own pace.

Mr Sin Boon Ann (Tampines): Thank you, Mr Speaker. On the point of competition and ranking of kindergarten, is not this already taking place at the pre-school level where kindergartens are being compared and pressures are on teachers to perform; parents are lining up at the kindergartens to register their children so that they can get into better kindergartens? I am asking this in relation to the response by the Minister about the effects of nationalising pre-school education by the Ministry.

Dr Ng Eng Hen: Sir, I apologise. Can the Member rephrase his question so that I understand what he is asking?

Mr Speaker: Rephrase but be brief, please.

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Mr Sin Boon Ann: The response by the Minister is that nationalising pre-schools will result in certain pressures on these schools to perform and the outcome essentially is that kindergartens will be under pressure to rank the teachers and their performance. My question is, is that not the case now in pre-schools where there is already competition to register children early in the better quality centres?

Dr Ng Eng Hen: Sir, my primary response was not that. I do not want to reiterate my whole reply but my point was that pre-school education must provide age-appropriate programmes and should not be an extension of our formal school systems. And in formal systems, you indeed have, as what the Member says, the pressure for uniformity, for performance, for transparency. Pre-school education, as in many countries, is not formal for good educational reasons. It recognises that children should be allowed to develop and before school, they are still developing and that there is a richness from the diversity of programmes. There is no formally recognised universal programmes for pre-schools and this is the reason why educators have not pushed for this. I do not think that Singapore will be well-served if you push for formalised pre-school education.

Mr Speaker: Mr Sadasivan, last question.

Mr Viswa Sadasivan: A supplementary question to the Minister following up from the point raised about accessibility. I believe that a student who does not go through pre-school education would be somewhat disadvantaged when he goes into primary one. So, if the cost of sending the child to pre-school is prohibitive for the parents, is there a risk that lower income families might not send their children for pre-school education and as a result, the child would suffer? Hence, the argument is that it is very

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important for us to make sure that access is universal. Can the Minister comment, please?

Dr Ng Eng Hen: I agree with the Member that accessibility is important and that is why I gave figures for efforts to target the lower income households to ensure that these children do go to, if they want to, kindergartens and able to afford it. I gave some figures for certain programmes that we have started and we have reduced the percentage from lower income families who go to school without any pre-school, from about 5% to 2.5%. In other words, about over 97% of children do go to pre-school. And we have worked together with the grassroots organisations. The main reason for the remaining 2% is seldom financial. Many Members who have worked together at the constituency level with the RCs, we have given Members the names to go to households to knock on the doors, and Members know for themselves that the reason is not an issue of affordability. There are a variety of reasons that certain families do not put their children into pre-school education.