1. Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Kenneth Tiong for moving this Motion.
2. This Government is focused on outcomes. We are committed to providing every child with a good start in life. Preschools play an important part in supporting our children's development, while meeting parents' caregiving needs. Over the past decade, preschool enrolment in Singapore has steadily increased. Today, around nine in 10 Singaporean children, aged three to six, are enrolled in preschool. We have enough full-day preschool places to accommodate every resident child aged three and above.
Desired Outcome for the Preschool Sector
3. The Government has no plans to nationalise preschool education. We value a diverse preschool sector where private preschools offer niche programmes that meet different preferences and needs of parents. We intend to keep the market open so that parents can continue to have choices. Our foremost objective, as rightly mentioned by Mr Tiong, has been to ensure accessibility, affordability as well as quality of our preschools for our parents' children. And we do this today through a mix of measures.
4. First, on the supply side, we provide operator grants and impose fee caps for Government-supported preschools and 80% of preschoolers can have a place in Government-supported preschools by the end of this year. Second, on the demand end, we provide a suite of subsidies. And third, to uplift overall sectorial standards which will not happen organically, we work with the sector to provide broad based support.
Supply side: Operator grant and fee caps for government-supported preschools
5. On the supply side, we fund private operators on the AOP or POP schemes to ensure they keep within fee caps while investing in quality improvements. In January this year, we reduced full day childcare monthly fee caps for AOP and POP by $40 and will further reduce it by $30 dollars next year.
6. To ensure that our AOPs and POPs maintain high standards of quality, operators go through a rigorous selection process, not one that is opaque as the Member suggested. Criteria consider factors such as the applicants' track record in providing quality childcare services, financial sustainability and accessibility of centres and local preschool demand. Applicants must also demonstrate commitment and ability to meet the AOP and POP scheme requirements, which includes the ability to provide affordable and quality preschool services and enhance, professional development and career prospects for early childhood professionals.
7. Mr Tiong suggested removing direct operator grants and replacing them with a per child subsidy via preschool vouchers for families. Implementing a voucher scheme alone may result in unintended consequences such as increases in preschool fees without corresponding improvements in accessibility or quality, as experiences in some countries have shown. In Hong Kong, where the preschool voucher scheme was implemented in 2007, but eventually discontinued, it worsened inequity as affluent families utilised vouchers for extra educational programmes. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, a nursery voucher programme implemented in 1996 was also discontinued shortly, because rather than improving quality and choice, it created unfair competition, reduced provider diversity and potentially harmed educational outcomes for young children.
Demand-side: Subsidies
8. On the demand end, we adopt a comprehensive approach to preschool affordability by keeping fees for Government-supported preschools low, and providing both universal and means-tested childcare subsidies to parents. The Government provides all Singaporean children with basic subsidies of up to $300 each for full day childcare as well as means-tested additional subsidies for eligible families. As a result of both fee caps, as well as subsidies, we have been able to effectively reduce out-of-pocket expenses, while ensuring access and choice of quality preschools for families.
9. Full day childcare expenses before means tested subsidies will be similar to what households pay for primary school and after school care fees combined in 2026. From January 2026, a dual income family with a monthly income of $10,000 will pay $235 per month for full day childcare in an AOP preschool after subsidies, half of what they would have paid in 2019.
10. Mr Tiong has implied that the preschool voucher system would give parents more autonomy to choose a preschool that suits their children's needs best and allowing for a market mechanism to work. This incentive is already built into the nature of childcare subsidies which preschools receive based on the number of children enrolled. Parents today are discerning when choosing preschools that best meet their child's needs and preferences, and this has promoted healthy competition among preschool operators and consequent improvements in quality.
Uplifting overall sectoral standards and broad-based support
11. A third plank in our strategy is to work with the sector to provide broad based support to uplift sectorial standards. Mr Tiong suggested using targeted voucher supplements to advance national objectives such as raising teacher wages. Salary increases must correspond with higher professional skills and contributions. A proposal to provide vouchers to preschools may not necessarily raise educators' salaries. Without due consideration for skills development and safeguards, such a move may run the risk of fee escalation without corresponding increase in quality of teaching.
12. In contrast, the Government has continued to make significant sector-wide moves over the past decade to invest heavily in professional development, enhance career progression and improve working conditions of early childhood educators. And one such example is the setting up of the National Institute of Early Childhood Development in 2019.
13. As a result of these concrete efforts to uplift sector quality, salaries of early childhood educators and leaders in AOP and POP centres have increased by at least 19% on average from 2022 to 2024, reflecting the deepest skills and contributions of our early childhood professionals.
14. I now address some other suggestions made. Mr Tiong suggested using vouchers to advance support for children with special needs. The Government has been enhancing support for children with developmental needs. We have enhanced subsidies for early intervention services and accelerated the increase in the number of Government funded places for children requiring moderate to high levels of early intervention support by almost 80% since 2020. ECDA is piloting a new Inclusive Support Programme (INSP) and we will expand the pilot by another 600 places from 2026.
15. On tenders for HDB and primary school sites, HDB sites are allocated to Government-supported preschools to avail affordable preschool services to residents soon after they move in. Nevertheless, I want to assure him that there are HDB sites open to all operators to bid competitively for, even as ECDA works with HDB to ensure that there are sufficient sites allocated for affordable preschool places today.
Salary Enhancements for AOP Educators in 2022
16. Mr Tiong asks about preschool salary enhancements in 2022. To give better context, ECDA has been working with AOPs and POPs to raise salaries and deepen professionalisation since 2016. In 2022, we signalled salary increases, paced over two years to maintain competitiveness relative to the broader labour market. Before the 2022 announcement, salaries for early childhood educators in Government supported preschools had already increased by 20% on average since 2018.
Conclusion
17. Sir, preschools play a key role in meeting families caregiving needs and complement parents in supporting our children's development. I can say so because I think about this every day when I send my five-year-old son to preschool in the mornings. The average Government expenditure per preschool age child has increased from $7,900 in 2020 to $13,000 last year, with a higher amount spent per child in both AOP and POP preschools and on children from lower-income families.
18. In 2019, we made a decisive move to expand Government supported preschool places to cater to 80% of preschoolers, so more Singaporean families can benefit from good access to affordable and quality preschools by the end of this year. We are getting there, but our work is not done. We will continue to evolve our policies to improve access to affordable and quality preschools across the sector – so that every child can have a good start in life.