Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

More PMETs making mid-career switch to become pre-school teachers

SINGAPORE — About 400 people signed up last year for the Government’s Professional Conversion Programme (PCP) in order to become pre-school teachers.

Assistant teacher Karina Lee with students at a Workforce Singapore event at My First Skool Toa Payoh yesterday. Ms Lee became an early childhood educator after having worked in IT for 17 years. Photo: Jason Quah

Assistant teacher Karina Lee with students at a Workforce Singapore event at My First Skool Toa Payoh yesterday. Ms Lee became an early childhood educator after having worked in IT for 17 years. Photo: Jason Quah

Follow TODAY on WhatsApp

SINGAPORE — About 400 people signed up last year for the Government’s Professional Conversion Programme (PCP) in order to become pre-school teachers.

This is a 40-per-cent jump in enrolment figures compared to 2015, and if demand continues to grow, the Government will explore expanding the capacity for this programme.

Announcing these yesterday, Second Minister for Manpower Josephine Teo said that the steady increase in enrolment numbers could be due to greater awareness of career opportunities in the industry.

The PCP for pre-school teachers takes in 450 candidates yearly for training to help them make the career switch, but this number may have to stretch as the Government pushes up the supply of pre-school places in the years ahead.

Mrs Teo said: “In the past few years, the PCP has helped to meet about 20 per cent of the growing manpower needs in early childhood education. It can meet up to 25 per cent of the training capacity.”

Workforce Singapore, the agency which runs the PCP courses, said that there were 400 mid-career professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) who signed up last year for the programme tied to the pre-school sector, compared with close to 300 in 2015. In total, more than 2,300 PMETs have joined since it was launched in 2009.

The training usually lasts between eight and 18 months, and during this period, trainees are hired by the participating pre-schools and receive a monthly salary.

The majority of those who had enrolled were in their 20s to 40s, with about three-quarters of them possessing a diploma as their highest educational qualification.

In his National Day Rally speech this year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced that there would be 40,000 more places opening up in the pre-school sector in the next five years, with a new national training institute for early childhood educators to be set up. While there are already 16,000 educators in this field, there is a need for another 4,000 more by 2020 to meet the demand for childcare places, Mrs Teo said.

One PMET who is undergoing the PCP now is 38-year-old Karina Lee, who joined My First Skool @ Toa Payoh as an assistant teacher after working in the information technology industry for 17 years.

Ms Lee said that she enjoys working with children and had wanted to be a pre-school teacher after completing her GCE O-Levels, but was dissuaded by her mother because of the poor career prospects back then.

Now that she is a mother of three children aged four to eight, being in the profession would also help her understand the development needs of her own children, Ms Lee said.

“As a pre-school teacher, you get to make an impact in the children’s lives and (watch them grow). That’s fulfilling,” she added.

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.