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New plan to create more rewarding careers for early childhood educators

SINGAPORE — A new plan to attract more educators to join the early childhood development sector was announced on Saturday (Oct 1) by the Minister for Social and Family Development, Mr Tan Chuan-Jin, at the Early Childhood Conference 2016.

A new plan has been launched to attract more early childhood educators. TODAY file photo.

A new plan has been launched to attract more early childhood educators. TODAY file photo.

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SINGAPORE — A new plan to attract more educators to join the early childhood development sector was announced on Saturday (Oct 1) by the Minister for Social and Family Development, Mr Tan Chuan-Jin, at the Early Childhood Conference 2016.

The Early Childhood Manpower Plan aims to increase the number of educators in the early childhood development sector to 20,000 by 2020, up from around 16,000 today.

The plan is part of the national SkillsFuture movement and is a collaborative effort by Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA), as well as key sector partners represented on the Early Childhood Sectoral Tripartite Committee.

It is meant to enable educators to have more opportunities to develop professionally, a more supportive working environment, and greater respect and recognition, said ECDA in a joint media statement with WDA released on Saturday.

This plan also builds on ongoing efforts to develop and support early childhood educators at every stage of their careers.

New initiatives that were announced on Saturday included a new Skills Framework for early childhood care and education, which spells out career pathways and guide job seekers, educators and employers to plan skills and competency-based career development. Training courses for mid-career entrants would also be made available under the Place-and-Train mode at all levels.

The plan will also enable a more supportive working environment and more productive work processes for educators, leveraging on technology to assist in knowledge management or improve productivity on administrative tasks.

It also aims to bring about greater respect for and recognition of early childhood educators. From next year, ECDA will encourage all pre-schools to provide a day off for early childhood educators on Teacher’s Day. ECDA will also provide an additional half a day of closure for child care centres, on top of the five-and-half days of closure allowed currently, of which one day will be used to celebrate Teachers’ Day.

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