MOE to open 13 kindergartens in high-demand areas in 2019 and 2020

SINGAPORE — Thirteen new Ministry of Education (MOE) Kindergartens will open in various estates with high demand over two years, in 2019 and 2020, mostly located in the Sengkang, Punggol and Yishun areas.

About 20 to 30 early years centres — pre-schools run by anchor operators catering to infants up to four years old — will open and partner the upcoming kindergartens, the ministry said during a media briefing yesterday.

Speaking to reporters after the briefing, Education Minister (Schools) Ng Chee Meng said that the ramping up of MOE Kindergartens is not to nationalise the pre-school sector. Instead, it is to uplift the quality of the whole early childhood landscape.

“(The number of) MOE Kindergartens will only be around 50, it will be a catalyst for upping teacher quality, providing curriculum research, pedagogy research, so that the teaching of early childhood curriculum can be professionalised,” he added.

During the National Day Rally on Sunday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced that the authorities will increase the number of MOE kindergartens from the current 15 to 50 in the next five years. A total of 40,000 pre-school places will be added by 2022, bringing the total number to 200,000.

He said the Government will also double its annual spending on pre-schools to S$1.7 billion in the next five years, which Mr Lee described as a heavy, but worthwhile investment.

Of the 13 new MOE Kindergartens, seven will be located at Sengkang, Punggol, Choa Chu Kang, Admiralty, Toa Payoh and Clementi and open in 2019. Another six will be at Yishun, Punggol and Sengkang and open in 2020.

By 2023, the MOE Kindergartens will serve about 1 in 5 children aged five to six.

The Education Ministry first announced its foray into the kindergarten sector in 2013.

It currently runs a pilot of 15 kindergartens, which are now seeing higher demand and enrolment figures after an initial muted response.

In February, the MOE said it was extending the pilot, with plans to open three more kindergartens in Punggol next year.

The ministry said yesterday that all MOE Kindergartens will eventually be located within primary schools, which allows the sharing of facilities and “enables closer collaborations”, such as between the teachers to help smoothen pre-schoolers’ transition into primary schools.

As such, three of the community-based MOE Kindergartens in Fernvale Link, Yishun and Tampines will be relocated to primary schools from 2019.

As for the upcoming early years centres, some will be located at new sites allocated by the Early Childhood Development Agency, while others will be converted from existing kindergartens and childcare centres.

The partnership between MOE Kindergartens and these centres was first announced in February as a new pre-school model to boost the pre-school facilities in Punggol.

Nursery 2 students from four early-years centres, operated by PAP Community Foundation Sparkletots and NTUC My First Skool, will be guaranteed a Kindergarten 1 place at a nearby MOE Kindergarten.

Each of the upcoming 13 MOE Kindergartens and an existing one at Sengkang Green will be partnering one to three of the new centres to provide “a continuum of quality and affordable pre-school services for children aged two months to six years old”, said an MOE spokesperson.

Parents will still have the option of whether to accept the guaranteed K1 spot at the nearby MOE Kindergarten or enrol at other non-MOE kindergartens.

Asked during the media briefing if the expansion of MOE Kindergartens could be seen as bringing forward primary school education by another two years, the spokesperson said it was not the ministry’s intention to do so.

“Primary school education remains at six years, Primary 1 to Primary 6. Where the MOE is trying to come in here is to expand our provision of services in the kindergarten sector and work alongside the other operators,” she added.

The children at the MOE Kindergartens are also managed separately from the primary schools they are located at.

While the pre-schoolers from the kindergartens have the option of moving on to these primary schools, the latter remain open to children from all kindergartens, the spokesperson said.

She also stressed that expansion plans for MOE Kindergartens are not an attempt to “steal” the business of other pre-school operators. Instead, the ministry wants to work with these anchor operators to meet the unmet demand in the market, the spokesperson said.