An Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) will be set up to oversee the regulation and development of kindergarten and child/infant care programmes for children below the age of six, to raise the quality of early childhood programmes in Singapore.

The agency will be jointly overseen by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), and will begin operations next month. It will integrate the capabilities of the existing MOE Pre-school Education Branch and MSF Child Care Division. Parents, operators, and early childhood professionals will be able to turn to the ECDA as a single point of interface for queries and feedback.

The agency will oversee measures to enforce and incentivise quality — including regulation, quality assurance certification, and the provision of early childhood development resources. It will also support the training and professional development of good quality early childhood educators and plan for pre-school infrastructure and manpower resources.

In addition, it will provide subsidies and grants to keep pre-school programmes affordable, and conduct public education and outreach to raise parents’ awareness and support for their children’s early development.

The agency will be helmed by Dr Lee Tung Jean, who is currently Director of the Energy Division at the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

More information on the ECDA will be available next month at http://www.ecda.gov.sg. Queries on pre-school matters can continue to be directed to existing points of contact in the MOE and MSF.