A master plan to develop early childhood educators

SINGAPORE — From next year, early childhood professionals can look forward to more incentives, training and recognition as part of a professional development master plan to raise the quality of early childhood educators and attract more people to the sector.

The Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Master Plan, announced yesterday by Social and Family Development Minister Chan Chun Sing, is one of the Early Childhood Development Agency’s (ECDA) strategies to retain and develop professionals in the early childhood education industry, which sees an annual attrition rate of 15 to 20 per cent.

The industry is hoping to increase its pool of teachers to 14,000 by 2017 — in time for the 200 new pre-school centres that will be ready then.

Speaking at the inaugural Early Childhood Conference yesterday, Mr Chan acknowledged the concerns of early childhood professionals about the gap in salaries and remuneration between them and other professionals in the education sector.

“Once we have a structured programme, it will give us reason ... to upgrade our quality, for the quality to be recognised and for our professionals to be similarly recognised,” said Mr Chan.

Support measures such as having a pool of relief teachers and flexible work arrangements to allow early childhood professionals the opportunity to attend CPD training are also being looked at.

The CPD Master Plan includes structured professional development road maps that outline new teaching and leadership pathways to help teachers become a Master Teacher, Mentor Principal or Supervisor.

A framework is being developed to provide induction and mentoring resources for rookie teachers by pairing them up with senior teachers.

The ECDA is also developing Core and Milestone CPD courses with the sector and will set a minimum number of CPD training hours that teachers have to go through each year.

Teachers will be able to plan and track their individual CPD road maps on an online portal.

More details of the plan will be out by June next year.

While operators TODAY spoke to welcomed the move to raise the quality of the sector, some felt the Government could provide better support for the framework through grants and subsidies for salaries.

Ms N Pushpavalli, Principal of Ramakrishna Mission Sarada Kindergarten, said paying teachers well would mean having to charge parents higher fees. The Government should help subside part of the cost, she added.

Operators said they were confident that with the support systems in place, more of them would register their staff for training and development workshops.

“The provision of continuing professional development opportunities often impacts staff retention and this could be a push factor, even though the framework is not mandatory,” said Ms Jane Choy, General Manager (Business Operations), G8 Education Singapore. ASHLEY CHIA