Developing Competencies of Preschool Teachers to Manage Early Intervention Programmes for Children

Mdm Speaker, from 1 October this year, Early Intervention Programmes for Infants and Children (EIPIC) teachers are required to attend certified training in early intervention within two years of joining the sector. The courses include Ngee Ann Polytechnic's two-year part-time Advanced Diploma in Early Childhood Intervention for Special Needs and certificate courses run by the Autism Resource Centre. Eighty per cent of the course fee is covered by subsidies from the VWO-Charities Capability Fund.

The Development Support Programme (DSP) supports children in mainstream preschool with mild learning difficulties. An eight-month course is in place to train the Learning Support Educators to equip them to screen the children and to carry out in-class support.

In addition to these efforts, the Early Childhood Development Agency will support preschool educators to develop deeper professional competencies and skills by putting in place structured career pathways for the early childhood sector. Opportunities for upgrading are also being expanded through a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Masterplan, which has seen over 5,000 teachers trained this year. More CPD courses will be added next year, which will include courses that help teachers identify and support children with special needs.

The answer is "yes". We are closely working with the Ministry of Manpower to see how we can expand the pool of teachers trained in this speciality and that includes the possibility of looking for foreign trained teachers.

Just to pick up on the point on the DSP. I understand that the DSP is rolled out only in certain preschools for K1 and K2 students. Are there plans to expand it to all preschools? And are there also plans to extend the EIPIC programme to more centres?

Mdm Speaker, let me answer the second question on EIPIC first. Yes, indeed, we are in the process of expanding the capacity for EIPIC. Over the last few years, we have upped the capacity to about 2,300. By 2015, we should see it going up to about 2,700. We will continually assess the needs for such services as we do better in early intervention and diagnosis for young children.

For the first question on the DSP, we will expand the programme according to the needs of the sector. But I must say at this point in time that we are also taking a review of how we organise the entire sector to provide support for children with special needs. And that is because we have two contrasting models possible. One is to have special childcare centres where all the children with special needs are concentrated together. This, arguably, is efficient; but from a social mixing point of view, it may not be optimal. On the other hand, we have another model which is to integrate all the children with special needs into the programmes for all the other normal children. This is, arguably, more resource-intensive. It stretches the teachers a lot because in each of those centres, we need to have dedicated teachers who are able to do those programmes with the children. But arguably, from a social integration point of view, that is a better outcome.

Between these two contrasting models, we have to find the balancing point between what we are able to do with what is optimal from a social integration viewpoint. And my Ministry will continue to look at this issue closely.

Madam, I would like to ask the Minister if he would consider this other model which is right in the middle of what was explained by

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him. It is between the segregation model where special needs children are all huddled together in one physical location and, the other one, where the children are fully mainstreamed.

There are models in the world that are actually middle-of-the-ground models where there are, for example, special schools within schools, or early intervention centres within a mainstream preschool setting. That is something that is not uncommon now. I would like to ask the Minister if he would consider studying that. Some of us who were serving in the special needs sector would be very happy to help out in the solutioning.

Mdm Speaker, yes, indeed that is one of the ideas that we are exploring to balance what I have just described as the two extreme models. Somewhere in between whereby we have a certain critical mass of special needs students at the same place to allow the resources to be used more efficiently; yet, at the same time, integrated with some of the programmes from the mainstream schools.

This will require us to do better upfront planning in terms of infrastructure support so that the two set-ups can be integrated together. And this is something that we will certainly explore going forward and we welcome Ms Denise Phua's help and suggestions to mobilise the community for us to see how we can bring this together. Because that would help us to better achieve the outcomes in terms of social integration and also resource utilisation, which is also a real challenge for the sector.