Career Impact of SkillsFuture Credits, Mid-Career Training Allowance and Level-Up Programme

1 Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Education whether the Ministry tracks the career impact of SkillsFuture credits on Singaporeans who have utilised them in terms of (i) employment status (ii) hours worked and (iii) wage outcomes, since such data may increase take-up rates.

2 Mr Kwek Hian Chuan Henry asked the Minister for Education (a) what percentage of SkillsFuture Level-Up participants secured new employment within nine months of enrolment, with a breakdown by age groups 40–49 and 50–59; and (b) what were their median wages before and after completion of training.

3 Dr Hamid Razak asked the Minister for Education (a) whether the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Training Allowance for mid-career workers aged 40 and above can also cover Singaporeans in their 30s who need to pick up new skills for fast-growing industries; and (b) whether more flexibility can be given for its use for further studies such as to pursue postgraduate qualifications.

4 Mr Kenneth Tiong Boon Kiat asked the Minister for Education (a) what is the rationale for restricting the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Training Allowance to citizens aged 40 years and above since skills obsolescence affects all ages; (b) whether the Ministry will consider the reskilling needs of workers in their 30s; and (c) whether the Ministry will expand SkillsFuture to support postgraduate qualifications (i) in critical sectors or (ii) in general.

5 Mr Vikram Nair asked the Minister for Education (a) in 2025, how many Singaporeans have (i) used their SkillsFuture credits or (ii) received training allowances to pursue upskilling and reskilling under the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Training Allowance scheme; and (b) how do the numbers in 2025 compare with that of 2024.

The Senior Minister of State for Education (Dr Janil Puthucheary) (for the Minister for Education): Mr Speaker, may I have your permission to take Question Nos 1 to 5 on today's Order Paper, please?

Mr Speaker: Go ahead.

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Sir, to help Singaporeans develop to their full potential throughout life, SkillsFuture Singapore provides a range of broad-based training support that is kept affordable and accessible. Industry-relevant training programmes are subsidised at up to 70% of the course fees for all Singaporeans. At age 25, Singaporeans receive $500 in SkillsFuture Credit, which they can use to develop their skills and interests.

For Singaporeans who are 40 and above, they can use the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme (SFLP). This programme helps them to pursue a substantive skills reboot and helps them stay competitive in a rapidly changing economy. We are prioritising support for our mid-career Singaporeans, as they may face higher risk of skills obsolescence, having completed their original work-ready qualifications many years ago. At this stage in life, given their heavy family and work responsibilities, they also face higher opportunity costs in pursuing upskilling and reskilling, particularly when they take up substantive courses that require greater time and financial commitment.

If they choose to pursue substantive training, the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme helps them lower the opportunity cost in two ways.

First, by providing further course fee support in the form of the SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career) top-up of $4,000. Introduced in May 2024, individuals can use the Credit to further offset out-of-pocket training costs. This is over and above course fee subsidies of up to 90%.

Second, we provide financial support for those pursuing longer substantive training, such as full qualifications. The SkillsFuture Mid-Career Training Allowance helps to partially offset income loss during full-time training. From 1 May 2025, eligible individuals can receive a training allowance, sized at 50% of their average income over the last 12 months, up to a cap of $3,000 per month, for 24 months in their lifetime.

Today, the SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career) top-up can be used for over 7,000 courses, of which, about 700 full-time training programmes qualify for training allowance.

The SkillsFuture Level-Up courses are carefully curated to support substantive training, with the aim of improving a person's employability. They include full qualifications offered by the Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs). These programmes provide good upgrading pathways that continue to enjoy good wage premium, as our studies have shown.

Individuals looking to transition into another sector can consider SkillsFuture Career Transition Programmes that provide training for up to 12 months as well as employment facilitation. Between June 2022 when the Programme started and December 2024, about 55% of almost 4,300 SkillsFuture Career Transition Programme trainees who were previously unemployed found new jobs within six months after course completion.

As of July 2025, there are about 330 SkillsFuture Career Transition Programmes offered in 21 sectors with good hiring opportunities such as Information and Communications, Professional Services and Food Services.

The take-up of the Level-Up Programme has been positive. In the first year of implementation from 1 May 2024 to 30 April 2025, over 36,000 Singapore Citizens used their SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career) with claims amounting to over $24 million. From the claims data, the number of individuals taking SkillsFuture Career Transition Programmes increased by about six times from around 1,500 to around 8,500, compared to the same period in the preceding year, and those who used the SkillsFuture Credit for full qualifications increased by about 2.5 times from around 3,000 to around 7,000.

Within the first three months of implementation, over 3,200 Singapore Citizens have been successful in their training allowance applications for full-time long-form training, with over $30 million in claims committed as at end-July 2025.

To build on this momentum, we will expand the Level-Up Programme in the following ways for the immediate term.

First, as announced at Budget 2025, we will expand the training allowance to part-time long-form training from early next year, to support mid-career Singaporeans who choose to pursue such training while continuing to work. This is estimated to benefit 10,000 Singaporeans annually.

Second, we will continue to refresh and expand the number of IHL full qualifications and stackable micro-credentials, as well as SkillsFuture Career Transition Programmes to meet emerging skills needs. For example, over 100 SkillsFuture Career Transition Programmes were launched this year in high-demand areas such as Artificial Intelligence.

Third, we will work with sector agencies and industry partners to include more courses offered by industry leaders and private training providers that are well-recognised by industry and confer credentials that lead to strong employment outcomes.

We will continue to monitor the training needs of adult learners over their life stages as we expand the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme. In particular, let me respond to two suggestions that Members have raised.

First, on extending the Level-Up Programme to younger Singaporeans. For now, younger Singaporeans in their 30s can continue to benefit from the broad-based training support that I mentioned earlier. This includes subsidies at up to 70% of course fees for all Singaporeans. Additional support will be given to lower-wage workers in their 30s. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Manpower announced the Workfare Skills Support Level-Up Programme to better support these workers in upgrading to full qualifications that can uplift their wages. From early 2026, lower-wage workers in their 30s will receive monthly training allowance when they pursue eligible long-form training, similar to the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme.

The second suggestion is to extend the training allowance to postgraduate programmes. Today, the training allowance supports mid-career substantive training up to the undergraduate degree level. Mid-career Singaporeans can use their SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career) of $4,000 to offset the out-of-pocket training fees for postgraduate Masters’ programmes offered by the autonomous universities. We have not extended the training allowance to postgraduate programmes as most jobs in Singapore do not require such qualifications. We are also careful not to inadvertently perpetuate a paper chase at the Masters’ level. Individuals can decide whether it is worthwhile to invest in a Masters’ degree, given its high cost but also potentially high returns on investment, however, this applies to a small number of jobs in Singapore. We will continue to monitor the needs for postgraduate training in emerging sectors and adjust our level of support accordingly.

We welcome feedback and will continue to monitor the employment outcomes from the increased training take-up.

The success of the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme ultimately must be measured by how confident mid-career Singaporeans are in using their newly acquired skills to navigate the disruptions in the economy ahead, and cannot just be measured by employment outcomes alone, since training alone cannot guarantee jobs and may not lead to immediate employment gains.

To help our people succeed, we need to continue strengthening the whole-of-society partnerships between Government, individuals, unions, industry and training institutions to build a culture of lifelong learning so Singaporeans can stay resilient, employable and competitive.

Mr Speaker: Mr Patrick Tay.

Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan (Pioneer): Speaker, I just have one supplementary question. Thank you to the Senior Minister of State for the response. In Singapore, SkillsFuture is divided into two broad aspects: the employers-supported aspect as well as the individual-initiated aspect. And if you look at resident training participation, particularly last year, 2024, it has dropped to a nine-year-low of 40.7%, compared to about 49.9% in 2021.

My question to the Senior Minister of State is, what can we do, or can employers do more? And how can we get them to better support both, from the employer-supported aspect as well as the individual-initiated training, as we embrace SkillsFuture in the next lap?

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Patrick Tay for his question. Indeed, we would ask for employers to do more to support our SkillsFuture movement. Overall, it has not been bad. If you look at the proportion of training places taken up under SkillsFuture, about 43% to 45% are employers-supported, which means that the learner, the worker, is not actually paying out of their SkillsFuture Credit.

And overall, if you take a look at the last 10 years, the numbers have indeed increased. We have seen an increase in the number of employers that are involved and an increase in the number of training places supported by employers. But as the overall number of training places has increased, the proportion has remained relatively static. We think there is room for the proportion to increase and for employers to do more.

There is also a benefit for the system and our movement, if employers can do more. Because if they are sending their workers for training, it means that they have recognised and are signalling the importance of such skills upgrading for their business and for their industry. It means that their workers and the learners under SkillsFuture have the assurance that these are industry relevant and are going to help them progress in their career. And it helps to, then embed this culture of lifelong learning as part of adult work.

Some of it is about the business decisions and the sense of investment in their people. And some of it is also looking at the processes within their companies, in terms of reducing the frictions to allow people to go for training, have the work covered and think about the job transformation that will allow the embedding of lifelong learning as part of the career.

So, I think there is room for the employers to do more. Some of it is about decisions in terms of the returns on investment that they will have and some of it is about reducing the frictions for their workers as learners in pursuing lifelong learning.

Mr Speaker: Mr Henry Kwek.

Mr Kwek Hian Chuan Henry (Kebun Baru): Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Senior Minister of State about the learnings that we have, given the fact that this is new programme and it is attracting a different group of Singaporeans.

I note in particular the statistics of around more than 50% of people who are able to get a job after this training. Is there any preliminary sense of what happens to the rest? I am asking because these groups are perfectly motivated people – they have a full-time job and then they transit, they retrain and, therefore, they should logically be able to get such skills because they highly motivated and are employable. Therefore, are there any lessons that we can learn or preliminary conclusions, especially with regard to matching the aspirations and qualifications of the trainees with the future industry needs?

Dr Janil Puthucheary: I thank Mr Kwek for the question. It is an important issue, but it is a little bit preliminary, it is a little bit premature. The programme is not very old and some of the types of gains that he is talking about will indeed take years to be realised. You transition into a new industry or even stay within the industry but now with the new set of qualifications. Although you have the qualifications, you now have to apply them to the job, develop your career prospects within this new role in this new task. And it can take some time for these to be realised in a metric that we can measure and present to the House.

So, in the short term, some of the things that we have learned are about the need to have better matching and better integration between the curricula, the services of the training providers and the needs of the industry; and to look to see how we can bring the employers and in particular, large employers, those that we think of as SkillsFuture developers or Queen Bees, together with the trade associations, have them either participate in the training or inform the training providers about the curricula, the job roles and the particular skills and tasks that the learners are engaged in.

The better we can do that, the more confidence the employers will have in the approach that we are taking and hence, the more confidence that workers and learners will have in dealing with the opportunity cost that is very real for someone undergoing training.

So, those are some of the short-term lessons. I think the issues that the Member has highlighted are indeed important, but it is a little bit early to have a definitive comment on that.

Mr Speaker: Dr Hamid Razak.

Dr Hamid Razak (West Coast-Jurong West): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to thank the Senior Minister of State for the detailed reply. I understand and appreciate the reasons why 40 was used as an age cut-off for the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Training Allowance. I am just wondering whether the Ministry has data on the appeals put to the Ministry for those aged 40 and below for the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Training Allowance – because studying those data may show us how better we can support the age group beyond just SkillsFuture itself.

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Sir, I thank Dr Hamid Razak for the question. Indeed, the decision to think of the age cut-off at 40 is informed by data, but not so much on the data that we have on appeals. I do not have the direct data for appeals received or granted. Perhaps the Member can return with a further question, if that is the focus.

The data that informs us about the age cut-off is about the risks of a given individual becoming unemployed, and the length of time taken for that individual to then go back into the workforce and find a job. And we can see that those in their 40s have a higher risk of becoming unemployed, potentially because of skills obsolescence, and take longer to then go back into the workforce and to find employment, as compared to people in their 20s and 30s.

And so for that reason, we have chosen the cut-off for that particular tier to be at 40. I just want to take the opportunity to emphasise that it does not mean that anybody under the age of 30 does not have assistance. There are the subsidies that are available to all Singaporeans at up to 70%, potentially rising to 90% if it is employer-driven; there is the SkillsFuture Credit that is available to everybody above the age of 25; and the moves that we are making to support lower-wage workers that are above the age of 30 that are coming and have already been announced.

I would also point out that there are plenty of training opportunities available to Singaporeans of all ages that are not under SkillsFuture. Many organisations make training opportunities available. The public sector is one, for example, that provides training through the Civil Service College and so public sector officers do not have to use the SkillsFuture Credit in order to develop new opportunities through training. And there are many other employers that are doing something similar.

Mr Speaker: Mr Kenneth Tiong.

Mr Kenneth Tiong Boon Kiat (Aljunied): I thank the Senior Minister of State for his reply. I have two supplementary questions. The first is about the age cut-off. The Government's own data of the labour force survey findings of 2024 shows that there is a drop in training participation, falling fastest in the 30 to 39 age group, from 49.5% to 44.7%. My first supplementary question is this: does that not suggest that the 30 to 39 age group should be the subject of greater help, particularly for the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme?

And the second question is in regards to the clause restricting the Mid Career Training Allowance to undergraduate qualifications. On Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Gan said that there were five growth areas: precision medicine, AI, green economy, autonomous vehicles, space, and there is a strong research and development (R&D) and reskilling component for all of these industries. For those that have reliable data that I have managed to find, most of the R&D jobs – 90% to 100% of them – do require postgraduate degrees; and generally, in the industry, it appears that 30% to 40% of the jobs in the industry do require postgraduate degrees. So, I will just ask the Senior Minister of State, does he not agree that the clause restricting postgraduate qualifications does not really align with the spirit of the Ministry of Trade and Industry's future strategy?

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Tiong for the two questions. For his first question on the age cut-off and the training participation, I think that we should not take the view that what we must strive for is for everyone to use up their SkillsFuture Credit as soon as possible, and to engage in training as soon as possible. The idea is to make sure that there is an assurance that at any time of your career over the course of your life, you will have the opportunity to reskill should there be a need. And so, if there is no need – you are within a career, you are developing your professional skillsets, there is opportunity ahead of you – then, that may be the right thing for you to do, rather than using your SkillsFuture Credit and going for a course for a certification.

We do want you to get into the culture of lifelong learning. And so perhaps, if there is an interest, a small course, please do so. But I think we should not necessarily see the data in a negative light. It may well be that that category of people does not need to utilise the SkillsFuture Credit in quite the same way and may need to do so at a future point in their career – which is its purpose.

For the second point in terms of the postgraduate support, as I have explained, we are open to considering if there is a need. The issue is whether today, the supply of people with appropriate qualifications in order to drive the development of those areas is constrained by the type of training that is provided. It does not appear to be a direct indication at this point in time.

We would also not want, as we are developing these programmes, to create a paper chase. Certainly, we do not want people to go and chase after postgraduate qualifications if they are not going to result in outcomes for that individual, which are useful to that individual.

So, I think we have started this. We will learn from the lessons as we implement it. And should the need be there, we can always consider it again. But at the moment, as I have explained my original answer, it is not that there are no postgraduate qualifications that are supported. It is specifically the training allowance that is not applied, but the SkillsFuture Credit can be used for Masters programmes at our autonomous universities, and those Master's programmes indeed do support the various niche areas that that Mr Tiong highlighted in his supplementary question.

Mr Speaker: Last supplementary question. Mr Vikram Nair.

Mr Vikram Nair (Sembawang): Thank you. I thank the Senior Minister of State, especially for the explanation of the Mid Career SkillsFuture Grant. The first part of my question actually was about the utilisation of SkillsFuture credits generally. Because I think in the middle of this year there was a report that said 70% of eligible households have not used the one-off $500 top-up for SkillsFuture, which is set to expire at the end of this year. So, taking the Senior Minister of State's point that SkillsFuture is meant for the long term, does the Senior Minister of State see this as a problem and is this something for which, say, the expiry should be extended, or something for which we should encourage people to utilise more quickly?

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Sir, I thank Mr Nair for highlighting the expiry of the $500 SkillsFuture Credit top-up that we have benefited from. I would encourage all Members of this House who I am sure are in the eligible age group, please do use up your expiring credits by the end of the year. Many courses are eligible for that subsidy.

But that is not the end of the SkillsFuture Credit, and there is the additional $500 opening Credit and then the $4,000 that is available for the long term which does not expire.

We do want to encourage people to take a few courses; and for some of the courses, you do not need to use very much of your SkillsFuture credits. Get into the habit of understanding what does lifelong learning look like and what does it mean to take a course while you are working if you have not done something like this before.

In terms of the overall utilisation, we do see a spread of individuals of about 30% in their 40s, 30% in their 50s and 30% in their 60s, which then highlights that actually, this is about giving assurance that at any point during your career, if you should need a reboot, an opportunity to develop a new set of skills, there will be support and opportunity created through the SkillsFuture movement.

So, in general, for most of the SkillsFuture Credit, there is no rush, and you can start to sample and set yourself up for the future. But for one particular tranche, I would encourage all Members and also, as you go and visit your constituents, to remind them that this $500 of SkillsFuture Credit is expiring by 31 December 2025. It is worth having your first taste of what it feels like to do lifelong learning and make use of those credits to do a course.

Mr Speaker: Indeed, thank you for the reminder. I must remind myself and my constituents this weekend.