CHILDREN NOT REGISTERING FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL

Mdm Claire Chiang See Ngoh asked the Minister for Education (a) how many children failed to register for primary school between 1992 and 1999; (b) what are the reasons for these children not registering for school; and (c) whether his Ministry will consider a policy on compulsory education for all children.

The Minister for Education (RAdm Teo Chee Hean): Mr Speaker, Sir, most parents are responsible and do register their children for Primary 1 in mainstream schools. Between 1992 and 1999, an average of about 1,500 children each year failed to register for school by the end of the Primary 1 Registration exercise. This is about 2%-3% of the eligible age cohort.

For children who do not register for Primary 1, the Ministry of Education makes the extra effort to track down the families, offer them advice, and help to enroll the children in schools. Could I ask the Clerk of Parliament to distribute a table. [Copies of table (Cols. 1985-1986) distributed to hon. Members.] Table - Breakdown of the 1677 Children not Registered for Admission to P1 after 1997 P1 Registration Exercise (Cols. 1985-1986)

First, letters, followed by reminders are sent to the parents, inviting them to register their children for school, or requesting information about their children's education. Where necessary, Ministry of Education officers follow up with visits to these families at their last known addresses, and most of these visits are conducted in the evenings to maximise chances of meeting the parents.

Through these efforts, about 70%-80% of these roughly 1,500 children eventually either enroll in mainstream schools with help from the Ministry of Education and MCD, or have made alternative schooling arrangements in Islamic Religious Schools, Special Education Schools or Private Schools. The remainder have either left the country, are medically unfit for school, have no known address, or cannot be contacted at their last known address. These are listed down for 1997 in the table that I have just distributed. We thus already have a system in which we systematically follow-up every case of non-registration for primary school.

The Ministry of Education has considered the option of introducing compulsory education in Singapore very carefully, and has decided not to do so for the following reasons:

(1) We must strike a balance between state's responsibility and family's responsibility. The Ministry of Education will make school places available, but parents and the family must want to send their children to school. This is a family's responsibility. Making education compulsory will undermine the principle of self-reliance and sense of parental responsibility which undergirds society; and

(2) Even if we legislate compulsory education for all children of school-going age, that does not in itself ensure attendance, much less motivation. Enforcement becomes a major issue. Jailing or fining parents who fail to register their children, or who do not send their children to school after registration, is unlikely to solve the problem, and may even make matters worse for the child and the family. Compulsory education does not solve the root problem, and it may merely re-surface in another form, such as absenteeism or truancy.

There is great concern that children who do not attend schools will be disadvantaged as Singapore becomes a knowledge economy. This is a concern which my Ministry shares. We will continue to work with MCD and other organisations to persuade, encourage and help parents to enroll their children in school. This is ultimately a more effective way than making education compulsory.

Mdm Claire Chiang See Ngoh (Nominated Member): I agree with the Minister about balancing the responsibility of the family and the school. But, Sir, in this case, is it not the responsibility of the state to give a strong sanction to families that are obviously irresponsible? We are assuming that parents are responsible to send their children to school. But when parents are irresponsible and do not send their children to school, what is the Minister's position then?

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Sir, as I said, by making education compulsory, we do not solve the root cause of the problem. In fact, we are looking at the symptom of the problem. What the Member is asking is whether or not we should be separating children from their parents because we, or somebody else, or perhaps the Member, judge that the parents are not carrying out their responsibility properly. That is a much larger question that goes beyond compulsory education.

Mr Simon Tay: Sir, I am not in favour of compulsory education either. But I think that we should be interested in the best interest of the child. Let me ask the Minister then. In the question of follow-up in the Annex that is given to us, if I add the figures for items 3, 4, 5 and 6, in item 3 (Parents responded to letter but did not specify very much), item 4 (Addresses not available), item 5 (Parents could not be contacted at the address stated) and item 6 (Parents have divorced and whereabouts of child are not known), may I ask the Minister, given that this is over 50% of the figures, will the Ministry further follow up? Surely it is possible for the SIR or other Government agencies to update the addresses and to pursue the parents and the children?

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Sir, first, I will comment on the way that the Member has added up the numbers. Item 3 should be added to the first two items, ie, items 1 and 2, that is, these families have indicated that their children are attending some form of schooling or other. So item 3 should be added to items 1 and 2 and you will get about 75%. For items 4, 5 and 6 where the parents' addresses are not available in the record, parents could not be contacted at the address stated and parents have divorced and whereabouts of the child are not known, we will take whatever measures we can to trace the children. As I said, we have a record of all these children and we actually go to quite some length to follow up on each of them. And I think that is a better way of dealing with the issue of trying to get as many children as possible into school than some blanket formula, like compulsory education, which looks nice but is not going to solve the problem.

Mr Shriniwas Rai (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, Sir, item 5 in the Annex says that parents could not be contacted at the address stated. The Minister just now has addressed the problem. May I ask the Minister whether he will consider speaking to the neighbours of these people to find out whether they could be contacted because the figure is quite alarming? At least, other steps should be taken to address this matter.

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Sir, I leave it to the people on the ground to do this. These are quite dedicated people and they are interested in wanting to get the children to go to school. In fact, what we are doing is that we especially hire some retired teachers and give them the list and ask them to go and try and trace these children. These people are quite dedicated. They have the interest of the children at heart and they do try their best to find them.

Mr Chiam See Tong (Potong Pasir): Sir, despite what the Minister has said, I remember not long ago the then Minister for Education said that there were 2,900 students who had not been enrolled in schools but now the Minister has given the figure of 1,500. Why is there this contradiction? That is the first question. The other point is that the Minister says that education is a family responsibility. The fact that the state has educational facilities for these children, does the Minister not think that the state is in fact irresponsible by not getting these children to school? How can a child be thrown into society without learning how to read and write?

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Sir, I am unable to answer the Member's first question because I do not quite understand it. On the second question that the Member has asked, I have already explained that. There should be a balance of responsibilities between the state and the family. The state provides the places. The families should want to send the children to school. And we take quite extraordinary measures to track them down and encourage them to come to school. While we want all of them to come to school, I do not believe that compulsory education itself is going to solve the problem. What do we do if the parents do not wish to send their children to school for some reason or other? Do we jail them? Do we fine them? I think that will make the problem worse. You break up the family. So while we want to encourage all these children to come to school, we need something which is more than compulsory education. Compulsory education is not a magic bullet which, if we enact, will suddenly see all the children in school miraculously. In fact, what we are doing is quite a sensible and reasonable approach, ie, to encourage as many children as possible to come to school, I think we have achieved quite considerable success.

Mr Chiam See Tong: Sir, does the Minister agree that the paramount interest must be the child? Even if the family is broken up because the state wants the child to be in school and one of the parents says no, does the Minister not think that the interest of the child should come first? If the family is going to be broken up, so be it. But the child must receive an education, otherwise he will be disadvantaged for the whole of his life.

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: I am not sure everyone would agree with the Member's assertion that the family must be broken up.

Mr J. B. Jeyaretnam (Non-Constituency Member): I was interested to hear the Minister say that the family should not be compelled to send children to school. Is the Minister not aware that in a great many other areas, compulsion is brought on adults to do whatever the Government thinks should be done, for example, topping up Medisave. Licences are not renewed unless people go and top up their Medisave? Is that not a compulsion even when they cannot afford to top up?

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Mr Speaker, Sir, in some cases, this will work, but in other cases, it will not. In the case of compulsion to attend school, I do not think it is going to work because it depends on a larger series of things to be in place first. I can compel or I can try to compel children to be in school, but I cannot compel them to be looked after properly when they are at home for 18 hours. A lot of things can happen during that period of time. As I have explained, compulsion to send children to school will not necessarily mean that they will be in school because there will be other issues then, like absenteeism, truancy, and so forth, which will not be solved merely by enacting legislation or putting in place the rule that says that all children must be in school. If we could magically solve that problem, I will be the first to do so.

Mdm Claire Chiang See Ngoh: I am still not convinced by the rationale. We have fines and legislation that have made people respond properly, so why cannot we compel parents to send their children to school? Would that not create a positive response? I would like the Minister to elaborate on that again.

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Mr Speaker, Sir, I circulated the Annex basically to show what we have done. I am not sure which group of these children we intend to compel to come to school because items 1, 2 and 3 are children who are already going to come to school. For items 4, 5 and 6, we cannot trace them. So how do we compel them?

Mr Low Thia Khiang: Would the Minister clarify item 3 in the Annex that parents responded to MOE's letter but did not specify whether their children were in local mainstream schools or other types of local schools? Are they in school or are they not in school? Does the Minister know?

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Sir, as the parents have responded that their children are in school, we take their word for it.

Dr Lee Tsao Yuan: I think there is a deeper issue here. The numbers actually are quite small. Categories 5, 6 and 8 together add up to only 282 children. But the issue is: should the child suffer because the parents are irresponsible? And I think many of us feel that children should not be made to suffer simply because their parents do not send them to school. In which case, if it needs legislation to have some sort of compulsion to enable the state or the authority to send those children to school, so be it. But the issue is that the children should not suffer because the parents are irresponsible.

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Mr Speaker, Sir, children always suffer when their parents are irresponsible. I am not sure that compulsory education, while it sounds very nice, is going to solve this particular problem. If you have irresponsible parents who have children and they do not bring them up properly, compulsory education on its own is not going to solve the problem. What we are talking about is removing children from the care of their parents. That is not compulsory education. That is a different subject.

Mr Speaker: Order. I think hon. Members are repeating the question in one form or other. We seem to be getting the answer in one form or other too. Unless there are fresh questions, I intend to proceed. Yes, Dr Wang.

Dr Wang Kai Yuen (Bukit Timah): Would the Minister elaborate the experience of other countries that have compulsory education and give us their experience and see whether or not Singapore should adopt compulsory education?

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Many countries have compulsory education. But I do not have the data with me. I was trying to track it down to answer the NMP's question, and I would track down the data. But from what I know of education that takes place in a number of these countries which have compulsory education, it is a nice piece of legislation but not all the children are in school.

Mr Zulkifli Bin Baharudin: Would the Minister give a breakdown of the number of students who have gone to Islamic schools, special education schools and private schools separately?

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: I do not have the breakdown with me right now. I will try and get it. But if the Member would file another question, I will try and get the data for him. I may not be able to get all.

Mr Jeyaretnam: Has the Government considered making education free for children of parents who may find it very difficult to send their children to school? Would the Government find some money for that?

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Mr Speaker, Sir, education is available to all in Singapore and a wide range of schemes are available. If there are children who the Member knows are unable to attend school because of financial reasons, please let me know. We will refer them to the appropriate authorities to help them, if the Member is unable to refer them to those appropriate authorities.

Mr Jeyaretnam: May I ask what is wrong in making a general policy announcement instead of leaving it to the parents to appeal for charity every time?

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: I am not sure what general policy announcement the Member is asking for. But as I have explained, anyone who needs financial assistance for his children to be in school, he is able to get it. If the Member knows of any such person, please let me know if he is unable to help him himself.

1.30 pm

Mr Speaker: Order. End of Question time.

[Pursuant to Standing Order No. 21(3), Written Answers to Question Nos. 12-17, 21-25, 27-29, 31-33, 35-37 on the Order Paper are reproduced in the section, "Oral Answers to Questions Not Reached" (Cols. 1963 - 1984). Question Nos. 11, 18-20, 26, 30 and 34 have been postponed to the next sitting of Parliament.]