Government Support for Pre-school Educators

Mr Ang Hin Kee asked the Acting Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports whether the Ministry will consider playing a capacity-building role to attract and build a pool of qualified early childhood professionals by supplementing the course fees payable by job seekers interested to join the profession and by providing training allowances during their course of training before they are employed by pre-school operators.

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Ms Low Yen Ling and Mr Ang Hin Kee have raised suggestions to support early childhood teachers and operators through raising the pay of teachers and subsidising the cost of training. Sir, currently, early childhood care and education are provided by a diverse range of providers offering a variety of programmes to cater to the different needs of children and preferences of parents. Childcare providers have the flexibility to employ their own teachers and decide on their pay scales.

Today, the Government provides significant support to the sector in staff attraction, development and retention. Subsidies are given to parents to defray the cost of fees which operators charge in order to cover their manpower costs. Non-profit Anchor Operators also receive a recurrent grant to help them recruit and retain teachers so that good quality pre-school services are available at an affordable fee for low and middle income families. We also help other operators meet their manpower needs by defraying training cost, and strengthening the sector's ability to attract more potential teachers while retaining their existing ones.

For example, we work closely with the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA), training providers and operators to raise public awareness of early childhood career opportunities and develop a pipeline of new teachers. Under the Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) System for Early Childhood Care and Education, training agencies provide subsidised training courses for new entrants to the sector, including mid-career entrants and in-service teachers looking to upgrade their qualifications.

More than 4,000 training places with funding support will be made available over the next three years to bring in more early childhood professionals under the WSQ qualification programmes. WDA subsidises up to 90% of course fees and provides employers with an absentee payroll subsidy of up to 80% of the employee's salary.

MCYS and WDA also provide scholarships to attract new teachers and encourage existing ones to upgrade their professional qualifications. These scholarships include learning allowances for those on full-time courses, and the employing centres receive a subsidy to hire relief teachers to cover the duties of teachers attending the course. Close to $10 million has been set aside for scholarships and teaching awards over the next two years.

To help operators improve staff retention, we introduced a Good Employers' Toolkit and conducted workshops on implementing progressive human resource practices. A Continuing Professional Development Framework is in the works and this will extend professional development and career advancement pathways and help retain talent.

Sir, our efforts have had some results. Total staff in the childcare sector increased by 25% last year. The attrition rate fell from 15% to 13% over the past year.

Sir, but there is room to do more. Moving forward, the Implementation Committee for Enhancing Pre-school Education, chaired by myself and Minister Heng Swee Keat, will look into further strengthening the career and professional development of our early childhood professionals. We will take note of the Members' suggestions as part of this process.

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Sir, I thank the Minister for his reply. Let me declare that I am the Executive Secretary of the Education Services Union. I have spoken to several principals, operators and at least close to about 100 teachers concerning their issues with regard to career prospects, image and pay. Many attributed these to affecting the number of people who are retained or attracted into the sector. When faced with challenges from other industries, other sectors which are providing better pay, better image, better training allowance and course fee support, many are driven to these other industries. I would like to ask the Minister, with our efforts to increase the number of centres by 200 over the next few years, are we considering additional enhancements to our existing efforts to attract and retain teachers with passion in this sector?

Sir, let me thank Mr Ang Hin Kee for his suggestions and comments. Yes, indeed, in our efforts to ramp up the number of childcare centres, the quality and quantity of the teachers are most important on our mind. So, indeed, we are looking at new pools of people that we can attract into the sector. These include some people who may want to do a mid-career switch. This may also include other people who may be only able to commit to a part-time work arrangement. But these are the new sources of manpower that we can tap down here.

On the other point that Mr Ang Hin Kee has suggested, indeed, we understand that it goes beyond the pay that is required to attract passionate and professional teachers into the childcare sector. Much of this also has to do with the career prospects. In this area of career prospects, we have to see how we can better organise the sector so that the operators can, indeed, provide such a career progression for the teachers-in-charge. One of the challenges that we are facing in this sector is that if the sector has many small operators, the small operators will always have problems providing the career opportunities for many of the teachers who may want to move up in their career progression. For example, some of them, after a while, may want to move on to become principals of centres or some of them may want to take on some other curriculum development jobs, and these are areas that we have to look at to see how we can provide better opportunities for them to fulfil their career aspirations.

Sir, I have two supplementary questions. The Minister in his reply said that the Non-profit Anchor Operators get a recurrent grant for recruitment and retention of staff. I would like to know exactly how are recurrent grants used. For example, is it being used to pay a certain percentage of the salaries of the new recruits and how is it being used to retain staff? For example, is it used to give bonuses to staff or maybe there are other methods? The next question is whether the MCYS has observed that in these two years since the Anchor Operators Scheme has come in, whether there is any noticeable flow of teachers from the other operators to the Anchor Operators because of this advantage that they have.

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Sir, on the issue of the recurrent grant: these are grants to help the operators defray their normal operating costs, which include the teachers' remuneration, or it can go into how they use the money for other operating costs like their utilities and so forth. Usually, when we give a recurrent grant to the operators, we will also have to set in place the quality standards that we expect from them. Otherwise, this might just go into the pocket of the operators which will not be fair to the public nor to the teachers involved.

On the flow of teachers, I do not have the exact numbers of how many people flow between the Anchor Operators and the Non-anchor Operators. But we know that a certain segment of the private operators is able to pay highly competitive salaries, and this is always a challenge for the mid to the lower tier of the market to retain good quality teachers, and this is something that we have to work on. For the mid-priced to the lower-priced operators, their challenge is always to retain the quality teachers, and, if pay is not the only reason that can attract them, then we have to look at other ways of attracting them – from the career progression to the career development opportunities that we can give them.

Many have lamented that, unlike other industries, the image of early childhood educators has been labelled by some to be "nannies". As compared to the Ministry's efforts to increase the profile of social work over the last one year, many have hoped that the Ministry will consider increasing the public perception of what this profession is and enhancing the image so that more will want to join and remain in this industry as a professional. Would the Ministry consider such an initiative?

Mr Speaker, Sir, yes, indeed, we are considering this and, indeed, this forms one key plank in our entire framework to improve the attractiveness of the childcare professional, the image of the whole childcare professional sector. As the Member has rightly pointed out, these are people that are professionals in their area because having to manage the children and their different learning pedagogies requires actual professional knowledge. So, it is not true that they are just, as you said, "nannies" or professional "child minders". There is a professional school of thought on how we can better bring up our children.

But, on the other hand, what you also touched about is this issue of the respect that we give to this group of professionals who are working with our children. Very often, all of us, as parents, can play a part to demonstrate our respect and appreciation to the many childcare teachers that are operating quietly behind the scene, taking care of our children. I have visited many of the childcare teachers and, very often, they tell me that beyond the pay, remuneration and the career prospects in this sector, sometimes, very often, they will just like some encouraging words from the parents who deposit their children there and whisk their children off at 7.00 pm in the evening. We can all do our part to try to raise the respect that we have for this sector and to realise how important a job they are doing in taking care of our children while we are at work. So, certainly, we will look into this.

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