Providing Stronger Incentives and Safeguards for Schools to Open Facilities for Community Use

Ms Diana Pang Li Yen asked the Minister for Education whether the Ministry will consider (a) providing stronger incentives or clearer guidelines to encourage schools to open their facilities for community use; (b) implementing safeguards and support mechanisms to minimise the risks and administrative burdens faced by principals in doing so; and (c) establishing a more systematic, nationwide framework to ensure community access is consistent rather than discretionary.

Mr Desmond Lee: My response will also cover the matters raised in the questions by Ms Elysa Chen and Ms Gho Sze Kee 1 scheduled for subsequent Sittings.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) partners Sport Singapore (SportSG) and the People's Association to facilitate community usage of school facilities outside of school hours. New schools are designed with sports facilities that facilitate community usage. Schools can also allow private buses to park overnight in their car parks.

To date, about 180 school fields and 220 indoor sports halls are actively used by the community under the MOE-SportSG Dual-Use Scheme (DUS). ActiveSG members can book school sport facilities, such as badminton, basketball and pickleball courts, for their use. Ninety percent of Government schools are already participating in DUS, and we target to onboard the rest by early next year.

To ease the administrative burden of participating DUS schools, SportSG manages the facility booking process and is responsible for the facilities during community sharing hours, ensuring they will be clean and ready for students. Here, I would like to appeal to our community users of school facilities to take good care of them, so that our students will have a pleasant environment to return for assembly on Monday.

We will continue to work to support schools to facilitate community use of school facilities.

Note(s) to Question No(s) 74:

1 Question subsequently withdrawn: To ask the Minister for Education (a) whether the Ministry will incentivise more schools to open facilities such as multi-purpose halls and car parks for public use, in line with our "we first" society and the need to make good use of limited resources; and (b) whether additional sports such as pickleball can be accommodated, given that security and property risks can be mitigated.