Achievement Awards for Special Education Students

Mr Zainal Sapari asked the Minister for Education whether the Ministry will consider allowing Special Schools to (a) award the Achievement Awards for Special Education Students (AASED) to students under their parents' name, given that the child is unable to open a bank account due to his or her disability; and (b) re-issue the cheques for the AASED under the student's parents' name for last year's award recipients.

To recognise and encourage students with special needs for their achievements and progress, MOE provides an annual lump-sum grant from the Edusave Endowment Fund Income to each Special Education (SPED) school to disburse school-based Achievement Awards for SPED students. The awards are disbursed in the form of crossed cheques issued in the names of the student awardees to ensure that the awards directly benefit the students concerned. Since the inception of the awards, SPED Schools are allowed to issue cheques in the name of their students' parents where the students are not able to open bank accounts due to the nature of their disability.

I thank the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for her response. The question relates to those who are in special schools. For example, we had within our constituency children who would not qualify for SPED schools but are being taken care of by their mothers, predominantly single mothers. We surfaced this to MOE. Would there be some form of support that MOE could give to the students, whether financial or some form of care, or some form of encouragement? In my constituency, we give book prizes from funds raised by the community to this group. But it would be nice to have the Government come in and also say, "Well done, keep on being courageous." Is this possible?

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Madam, I thank Mr Christopher de Souza for his supplementary question. The vast majority of students with special needs – if the needs are mild in nature, they can be in our mainstream schools. But if they are moderate to severe in nature, the vast majority of them are being educated in our SPED schools. I imagine the cases that Mr Christopher de Souza mentioned may be very specific in nature. For every child, we want to see how best we can support his or her learning, whatever the case of the difficulty and whatever the individual's circumstance that he or she may be in. So, we would like to look at such cases separately and in a very customised way.