PREPARATORY YEAR COURSES IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS (Objective of pilot project)

Mr Low Thia Khiang asked the Minister for Education what was the objectives behind his Ministry's pilot project of Preparatory Year courses in primary schools; what was the result of the project; and how much was spent in total.

The Minister for Education (Mr Lee Yock Suan): Mr Speaker, Sir, the objectives of the pilot Preparatory Year project are, firstly, to set a benchmark on the standard of pre-school education for private kindergartens to emulate and, secondly, to develop a well-structured systematic curriculum using multi-media materials and an effective teaching approach which can be adopted by the private kindergartens to provide good pre-school education.

The project was generally well received. The teachers found the curriculum to be well structured and systematic. The multi-media materials have helped to make lessons more enjoyable and interesting to the children. The parents were generally satisfied with their children's progress.

A total of $1.3 million has been spent on the development of the Preparatory Year instructional packages in four languages, English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. This covered manpower cost and the production cost of the trial editions of the PY instructional materials. Production cost for the published editions was met by the co-publisher. These packages as well as the curriculum and teaching methods will benefit many pre-school children when the lessons from the PY project are widely applied.

About 5,400 pupils were enroled in the PY project in 1990 and 1991. The schools involved incurred a total operating cost of about $14 million over the two years. This works out to an average cost of about $220 per month per child.

Mr Low Thia Khiang (Hougang): Does the Minister mean that this pilot project is solely for study purposes?

Mr Lee Yock Suan: That is the meaning of the words "pilot project". But it may be useful here if I give Members a bit of the background on the history of how this scheme came about.

Some Members may recall that in the late 70s many traditional Chinese schools were faced with declining enrolment. The Government therefore introduced pre-primary classes to make work for surplus Chinese language teachers and to arrest the declining enrolment. Despite these measures, the enrolment continued to decline and many of these schools had to close down. A small number of very good Chinese primary schools wanted to teach Chinese at CL1 level. The Government allowed these schools to continue to run their pre-primary classes. They were renamed as Preparatory Year classes and were confined to 10 SAP schools in 1990.

The Ministry subsequently decided to use the Preparatory Year programme to develop better materials, curriculum and methods for children of all language streams. The pilot programme was therefore extended on a pilot basis to five more SAP schools and 20 non-SAP schools.

The project has provided useful lessons on how to upgrade the kindergartens. It has also generated overwhelming response from parents. Demand for places far exceeds the number available. It is untenable to continue the project on the present scale. To extend the programme to all primary schools is neither cost effective nor practical. The Government has therefore decided to wind up the pilot project and apply the lessons learnt to help upgrade the private kindergartens.

Mr Low Thia Khiang: Does the Minister think that it is justifiable, after spending so much money on this pilot project, to again allocate another $4.2 million to the PAP Community Foundation to carry out another similar project?

Mr Lee Yock Suan: Mr Speaker, Sir, as I explained, the amount of money spent on this programme is not that big. Actually, it amounts to $1.3 million for the purpose of writing up the new teaching materials, developing the new curriculum, providing new worksheets and teaching methods. This money is not wasted. It can be applied to all the private kindergartens and I expect it will be applied very widely in due course.

As for the upgrading of the PAP kindergartens, it is part of the Government's effort to help upgrade private kindergartens. So we should not grudge it and deny our young children the opportunity to learn in a better environment using better methods. It is our intention to continue to upgrade the kindergartens for the benefit of our children.