Ensuring Preschools Remain a Safe Environment and Preventing Cases of Violence by Staff against Any Child

Sir, it is essential for preschools to ensure a safe and conducive environment for children to learn, play and develop. The Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) takes a serious view of child mismanagement in preschools.

Under the Early Childhood Development Centres Act and Regulations, all preschools are required to adhere to safety requirements and ensure the safety and well-being of enrolled children. For instance, actions such as corporal punishment; giving harsh, humiliating, or degrading responses of any kind; and deprivation of meals are prohibited.

Preschools are required to put in place practices to enable respectful, responsive and reciprocal staff-child interactions that support children's learning. Preschools must also make sure staff use positive and developmentally appropriate methods to interact and communicate with children and infants.

Apart from communicating clear guidelines on appropriate child management to staff, centre leaders are also expected to carry out regular observations of staff-child interaction. They should also provide timely feedback to staff on concerns regarding their management of children and intervene, if necessary.

ECDA works with educational institutes and training providers to incorporate child safe practices in the training curriculum for early childhood educators. In their pre- and in-service training, educators learn about appropriate child management strategies, as well as practices which are prohibited under our regulations.

ECDA also promotes sharing of good child management practices among educators during our regular engagements with the sector and our visits to preschools.

To check preschools' compliance with regulatory requirements, ECDA conducts regular unannounced supervisory visits. ECDA also conducts investigations promptly every time we receive feedback on suspected child mismanagement. Preschools found to have inadequate child management measures in place may be issued warning letters, subjected to financial penalties, have their licence revoked or licence tenure shortened.

Notwithstanding the measures highlighted earlier, unfortunately, there can still be incidents of child mismanagement. In the event of alleged child mismanagement, preschools are required to report the incident to ECDA within 24 hours. For serious cases, such as where there appears to be clear intent to harm the child, the case will be referred to the Police for criminal investigation.

I thank the Minister of State for her reply. I have three supplementary questions in this regard. Firstly, I understand there was this case that was published in February in relation to a preschool teacher harming an infant. The teacher, particularly, withheld material information and as a result, there was a delay in terms of detection of the injuries that were suffered by the infant. It is rather unfortunate. To prevent this kind of incidents from happening again, I wonder if ECDA is able to facilitate to ensure that it is easier for parents to request for videos or CCTV footage where such incidents had purportedly happened.

The second supplementary question is, we also understand that taking care of young children, especially infants, is very challenging. It requires a lot of patience and caring from carers. I wonder if preschool teachers, in particular, those tasked to take care of infants, have to undergo a series of training to be more mentally resilient and are monitored by the principals in this aspect on a regular basis?

The final question is, flipping the coin around, I would like to enquire if there any measures in place for preschools to touch base with children who may not have been attending preschools on a regular basis recently, due to purportedly COVID-19-related situations, to ensure that they are actually not suffering from any domestic violence in the meantime.

I thank the Member for her three supplementary questions.

The first point about the case that she highlighted; the case is before the Courts. I would just like to assure the Member that while the investigations were ongoing, that the preschool had suspended the staff in December 2019 and then terminated her employment in January 2020. There was also a warning letter issued to the staff for child mismanagement. Subsequently, she is not allowed to continue working in preschools.

The Member mentioned a specific point about CCTV footage. Indeed, when there are cases of alleged child mismanagement, the preschool is required to do what they can, including looking at CCTV footage, to be able to present the material to parents, as well as to the Police to aid them in their investigations.

On the other point that the Member raised, indeed, ECDA ensures that when it comes to pre-service training as well as in-service training, that there is a need to enable our preschool staff to have the appropriate child management strategies. So, for instance, in pre-service training, individuals have to undergo ECDA-accredited early childhood programmes, which cover the following areas: firstly, classroom management and positive guidance strategies; secondly, they have to adhere to the code of ethics in engaging children in preschools; and they are also reminded about the practices that are prohibited under the ECDC regulations. And I had mentioned that earlier in my main response, which is about the use of corporal punishment, deprivation of meals and so on. These are all strictly prohibited.

At the same time, in-service training is also very important and that is why ECDA works with the National Institute of Early Childhood Development (NIEC) and private training providers, to provide Continuing Professional Development courses to support staff in the management of children's behaviours.

On the third point the Member mentioned, indeed, we are concerned about cases whereby the children may be experiencing family violence or domestic violence at home. So, one of the things that we are looking at strengthening is about body safety awareness and training. So, MSF is consciously reaching out to preschools to facilitate training in family violence, as well as in domestic violence, so that their educators are aware of what are the signs to look out for.

And where there are instances when a child is consistently missing school, the preschools are encouraged – and I hear this on the ground as well – to call the parents to find out what is happening. And where there are concerns that there might be issues of neglect or potential abuse happening at home, the preschool educators are also encouraged to work with MSF's Child Protective Services (CPS). When the CPS is involved, they will call the parent, arrange for video calls, make visits to check on the child's well-being.

I would like to assure the Member that we take the safety of our preschoolers very, very seriously. And we will do what we can to ensure that we protect our preschoolers from violence, abuse and neglect.