Affordable Pre-school Fees

Mdm Speaker, MOE's pilot kindergartens seek to provide quality and affordable kindergarten education for children from a wide range of family backgrounds. Teaching and learning materials developed will be shared with the rest of the pre-school sector to catalyse quality improvements.

The monthly fee is kept affordable at $150 for Singapore Citizens. While other operators can take reference from the fees of MOE pilot kindergartens, this is not the key purpose of the pilot kindergartens.

Notwithstanding this, we recognise parents' concerns about pre-school fees. One of the key priorities of the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) is to keep early childhood programmes affordable, especially for low- and middle-income families. Apart from providing subsidies to parents, ECDA will continue to support Voluntary Welfare Organisations and Anchor Operators to provide quality pre-school services at an affordable fee in the heartlands. ECDA will expand the Anchor Operator scheme to more operators, so that more parents and children may benefit.

ECDA also provides guidelines to ensure that fee revisions are carried out in a transparent manner. Centres are required to give parents sufficient advance notice, and can only revise fees at the start of an academic year. Centres are also advised to clearly explain the basis for their fee increase to parents and directly engage parents who face difficulties in meeting the fee increase.

Mdm Speaker, I would like to thank the Senior Minister of State for her comprehensive reply.

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Indeed, MOE kindergartens are a very good place to start and it is an excellent initiative. I have spoken with young parents and they welcome the added contributions to Child Development Accounts (CDAs). Unfortunately, some of the same young parents say that unscrupulous private operators in the forms of kindergartens and childcare centres use the increase in the CDA to raid and justify to themselves an increase in fees. So, sometimes, it is sort of like a dog catching its tail. More subsidies go into the CDA, and then the private childcare operators are sometimes unscrupulous to raise fees. That catches some parents off-guard.

My question is, could there be some form of fee justification that can be built into the industry, especially for the private, for-profit operators, and submission of those fee increases to MOE, and some form of general justification as to why. If it is for increase in salaries for teachers, then that may be a good reason. But if it is just to increase profit, it may not be a good reason.

Mdm Speaker, if I may address the Member's questions: sometimes, there is confusion as to what MOE's role is, and what the role of MSF is. If I could assist in this regard: MSF is the Ministry that looks after the pre-school sector as a whole. MOE's role is to look at curriculum and to provide input on that to make sure that the educational portions are addressed. And then, of course, MOE had recently entered into the pre-school space by having MOE kindergartens.

With respect to the question that was originally asked, as to whether MOE's entry into the market could have an added purpose of affecting the fees of the private operators: as I have answered, that is not the primary purpose, although the entry of MOE into that space with the provision of the MOE kindergartens will undoubtedly be something that the private sector pre-schools have to take into account because there is now an alternative that is providing pre-school education at an affordable rate.

With respect to the question that the Member has just raised about fee justification for the private pre-school operators, as indicated in my earlier answer, I believe that they are required to justify any fee increase to ECDA which oversees the pre-school sector. They must justify by giving the reasons for the increase and give six months' advance notice to give parents sufficient time to find an alternative if the parents are not able to afford that. If in the course of giving their justifications, it appears that that is not sufficient, I am sure that that is something that MSF will take into account.

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I thank the Senior Minister of State for the tutorial of the delineation of the two Ministries. I would like to ask, therefore, that the MSF considers this very seriously on a whole-of-Government approach, that the MSF takes this very seriously because there has been quite a lot of feedback from young parents with pre-school-going children that whenever there is an added contribution from the Government into the CDA, somehow, magically, the fees increase downstream. I do think that we need perhaps a little bit more teeth to ensure that the minority, unscrupulous private childcare operators do not have a free rein on increase of fees.

Mdm Speaker, I would agree that that is valid concern on the part of the parents and I will without any doubt convey that to the Minister for the Ministry of Social and Family Development.