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Efforts made to strengthen mentoring culture for early childhood educators

We thank Denise Pun Jie Zhen, Janice Gee Hui Yan and Diane Tan Shuying for their feedback in the letter, “Provide mentoring to retain early childhood educators” (March 8, online).

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Tan Hwee Pin, Director, Professional Development, Early Childhood Development Agency

We thank Denise Pun Jie Zhen, Janice Gee Hui Yan and Diane Tan Shuying for their feedback in the letter, “Provide mentoring to retain early childhood educators” (March 8, online).

To attract, retain and develop our early childhood educators, the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) has been working with our industry partners to strengthen the mentoring culture in the sector.

To help budding educators smoothly transit from school to work, we enhanced the internship programme in 2015 for students from the polytechnics and Institutes of Technical Education. Grants are provided to support hosting pre-schools and mentors to deliver consistent and quality experiences for their interns.

More recently at the Committee of Supply debate in Parliament, ECDA also released plans for a new apprenticeship model of training for aspiring infant educarers. This programme centres on structured on-the-job training, with mentoring by more experienced infant educarers.

We can do more together to foster a mentoring culture in the early childhood sector. ECDA Fellows, comprising pinnacle leaders in the sector, have been very active in training and mentoring pre-school leaders and teachers on different areas of expertise.

At each pre-school, we also hope to see experienced educators actively provide mentoring to new colleagues. Professional development courses, including the recently introduced Advanced Diploma in Early Childhood Teaching, are available for them to hone their mentoring and facilitation skills.

With this, we can further enhance the quality of care and education for our young children.

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