Availability of Qualified Infant Care Personnel

Mdm Speaker, the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) monitors infant care demand and works with the preschool Anchor Operators to increase the supply of places in areas of high demand. Between August 2013 and July 2014, ECDA added more than 320 infant care places across 25 childcare centres.

In expanding infant care and child care supply, the availability of manpower is one challenge. ECDA is taking steps to facilitate the recruitment of more infant educarers. For

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example, the agency organised an Early Childhood Career and Education Fair in May this year. The event attracted more than 1,000 jobseekers, of which 20% were interested in educarer positions.

ECDA has also worked with the Singapore Workforce Development Agency to introduce a traineeship programme for those interested in jobs in the early childhood sector. Trainees will receive a training allowance for the 40 to 80 hours traineeship, and further incentives if they complete the programme and remain in the sector. Twenty preschool operators have come on board the programme since its commencement on 1 July 2014.

In addition, there are Singapore Workforce Skills Qualifications courses for infant educarers that provide mid-career entrants or back-to-work women the flexibility to work in childcare centres while undergoing training. Placement and funding support are available to eligible trainees and centres. There are 160 trainees currently enrolled in these courses.

Thank you, Mdm Speaker. I have one supplementary question. Every week during my Meet-the-People Sessions (MPS), I have residents who come and ask for help. They have been putting their children on the waiting list of childcare centres. It looks like there is an acute shortage. So, I would like to ask: what is the average waiting time and what more can be done, because every week I have been seeing residents asking for help. I wonder if this problem is unique to Nee Soon South or it is a nation-wide problem.

Mdm Speaker, let me reply to Er Dr Lee Bee Wah's questions. Indeed, we have a challenge now. And let me explain how ECDA and the Ministry try to work with the various operators to try to meet this challenge of the supply and demand issues in the childcare sector.

On the demand side, we are doing two things to make sure that we have the places at the correct location. The first thing, as Members will know, is that we recently introduced a registration management system. This gives us a better fix of who are the people who are really in the queue or demand. And what we have discovered, very quickly, is that the real or actual demand is a fraction of what the queue may have represented in the past. For those operators who have come on board with us, they are able to deconflict the people who have either got a place somewhere else but never informed them and they should be out of the queue, or there are people who are queuing at multiple centres, sometimes more than 10 centres, and that messes up the projection demand.

So, the first thing we want to do better is for the registration management system to get a better queue system in place, to know the actual demand. That will allow the operators to better site their operations to where it is required. So, that is the first thing – right

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numbers. The second thing that we want to do better is to make sure that the planning of places in each level is correct. Because while the total number of places is one thing that we are concerned with, we are also concerned with the number of places in each level – whether it is N1, N2, infant care, and so forth, so that there can be better matching. The third thing is a better siting of the location. Some of the high demand areas, like Nee Soon South, Punggol and Woodlands, are where we have allowed the Anchor Operators to quickly expand capacity.

The second set of things that we want to do better on the demand side is to make sure that we get the incentives right, so that we target the subsidies to those people and families who need help the most, so as to avoid a situation where people over-consume the services that they may not necessarily require.

On the supply side, we are also doing four things to make sure that we increase the supply to meet the demand. First, we want to make sure that we strengthen the process of recruitment upstream. We are giving out more scholarships and more training awards, and these will strengthen the pipeline of people coming through to the sector. Second, what we are going to do is to review the career pathways and progression for people to find it attractive and professionally challenging to stay in the sector. Third, we want to make sure that in terms of retention of manpower, we will be able to stretch the career of the early childhood professionals so that we reduce the churn in the sector and also to reduce the training resources we need to pump into this sector. And the last thing is getting the sites right. So, we have placed a lot of emphasis on areas with a larger population of younger families, for example, Woodlands, Punggol, Pasir Ris, Sengkang and some parts of Yishun Town itself. In the eastern part of Yishun Town, we have a lot of new families coming on board.

So, these are various things that we are doing to make sure that we better match the demand and the supply of childcare.

Finally, if I may just share, the structure of the sector is a bit different from some other industries. In this sector, we will have to work very closely with the operators in managing the supply and the demand of child care because this sector is operated by a number of Anchor Operators and many more private operators. So, we have to talk to operators to make sure that they work with us to provide the career opportunities for the teachers to be recruited in the sector and to stay in the sector.

Last but not least, for many of the places like Yishun, what we are seeing is that childcare places are available but the critical shortage is in the recruitment of the teachers. And we have seen some innovative ideas from some other estates whereby they recruit part-timers and women who are hoping to return to work after bringing up their children. And these are

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auxiliary manpower that we can quickly get in to staff the centres. So, the availability of childcare places is not necessarily the bottleneck for Yishun. It is the recruitment of the educarers that are required and we welcome suggestions on how we can strengthen this pipeline, especially in a very labour-tight market.

Thank you, Madam. I have a couple of supplementary questions. May I know what is the percentage of those who are undergoing training as preschool teachers who will eventually end up as preschool teachers? Is there a high attrition rate for those who undergo the training programme but did not end up as preschool teachers? My second question is about the traineeship programme for the early childhood sector. I think the Minister probably touched on this a little bit earlier, but I am wondering if a part-time scheme or flexi-adjunct scheme for stay-at-home mothers can be introduced under this traineeship programme, to encourage more stay-at-home mothers to come out and join the preschool sectors as educarers or teachers.

Mdm Speaker, in response to the first supplementary question from Dr Intan, yes, indeed, the attrition rate is higher than what we would like it to be. We want to bring this down, which is why we are working closely with MOE and the ASPIRE Committee. The first thing we need to do better is to make sure that we counsel the people taking up early childhood care and development courses, that they must have a passion and they must be prepared to undertake the work in the sector. Like many other sectors in the Polytechnics or even in the ITE, there would be people who took up the courses but eventually did not take on the particular job there. I do not have the exact attrition rate but I know that it is much higher than what I would like it to be. I can get the numbers for the Member subsequently. So, this is what we want to do – to reduce the attrition from the pipeline. That is something that we need to work together with the operators and also do counselling.

On her second question on the flexi scheme, as she called it, indeed, that is what we are working closely with the operators to do, not just for the women who are returning to work but also some of the people who have recently retired and are able to play a role in the sector.

In fact, we are prepared to be very flexible to get the manpower into the sector. Recently, we started a scheme, which is to have a registry of all the people who have just left the sector or who have retired from the sector, for them to come back as part-timers to join us as and when they want. They not only provide a ready source of manpower, they also provide supplementary manpower for our own teachers in the sector to go for training. Without them, it will be very difficult for our teachers to upgrade themselves. So, we are

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doing all this and we will continue to welcome any ideas in order to supplement the manpower in this case.

Thank you, Mdm Speaker. I had gone round to check all the childcare centres in Nee Soon South. They are all filled up. There is no vacancy. Subsequently, I asked them to expand, and NTUC and PCF expanded but they could not find teachers. So, in fact, the real problem is a shortage of teachers.

I would like to ask the Minister whether the Ministry can take on a more structured way of recruiting on a nation-wide basis – give them more incentives and, perhaps, make the training simpler. I was told that for infant carers, they need to go through a certain duration of training. So, if you were to recruit some of those housewives who are very good in caring and have the experience in caring of babies, if you asked them to go and study, they would say, " Ai tak chek ah?" or "we have to study?", then they would not want to come forward. Perhaps we need to put in more incentives, make the training easier, so that we can have sufficient teachers for our centres.

Mdm Speaker, indeed, the issue is not the availability of childcare places but the number of people that we can recruit. For example, in Yishun, I think overall and nation-wide, in the last about five years, we have increased the number of places by three times. But the enrolment rate in Yishun is particularly high. Today, you are at about 88% to 89% enrolment, meaning the places are all filled up. The rest have to do with a bit of matching because of the differences in the level.

Indeed, we are trying to expand the number of people that we can recruit. And let me assure the Member and all Members of this House – do not think that it is our intention to make the qualifications very academic; in fact, I do not think many of the qualifications and the courses are that academic. For most trainees, we recruit them on what we call a place-and-train basis, that is, we recruit them, they show the correct aptitude, they show the skill sets and can give assurance to the parents that they are able to take care of the children, then we do the modularised training and upgrade them along the way. That helps us to bring them quickly into the workforce, into the sector, and when we need to, upgrade them on some of the handling skills.

I agree with the Member that many of our parents never went through this kind of courses but they brought us up all right, I hope so. So, what we are looking for are not academic qualifications. What we are looking for are people with the right skill sets that give assurance to the parents who leave their children with us. Some issues in terms of safety,

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hygiene – these are fundamental aspects of training. And at the same time, educarers must have the heart to want to care for the children. So, they are not going to go for a lot of examinations and tests on the academic side, but more on practical skills that can help them. And we are talking about educarers – we are not talking about the people who are teaching the languages, as those would need certain qualifications – with practical skill sets, and we hope that we can have these people.