Ensuring Staffing Adequacy with Additional 40,000 Infant Care and Childcare Places Coming Onstream

50 Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng asked the Minister for Social and Family Development (a) how will the Ministry staff the additional 40,000 infant care and childcare places announced to be open over the next five years; and (b) how will other related sectors that are short of manpower be not negatively impacted.

51 Mr Desmond Choo asked the Minister for Social and Family Development in view of the plan by the Early Childhood Development Agency to add 40,000 new infant care and childcare places by 2029 (a) whether the operators will face challenges in recruiting and training qualified early childhood educators; (b) if so, how does the Ministry plan to work with industry stakeholders to address this issue; and (c) whether the Ministry will put in place measures to ensure that the expansion does not compromise the quality of care and education provided.

The Minister of State for Social and Family Development (Ms Sun Xueling) (for the Minister for Social and Family Development): Mr Speaker, may I have your permission to address questions filed by Members Ms Denise Phua and Mr Desmond Choo together, as they relate to early childhood manpower?

Mr Speaker: Please go ahead.

Ms Sun Xueling: Our early childhood educator workforce grew from over 18,000 in 2018 to over 25,000 today. To expand Government-supported preschools to cater to 80% of preschoolers, the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) has been working with Government-supported preschools to grow their local and foreign workforce, as well as optimise manpower deployment to ensure that centres are adequately staffed. Notwithstanding these efforts, we estimate that another 1,500 more educators will be needed in the coming years.

We will grow the sector workforce while maintaining high standards of skills and competencies. All early childhood educators must complete pre-service training and meet professional, language and academic requirements before ECDA certifies them for deployment in our preschools. For in-service early childhood educators, ECDA has launched the Continuing Professional Development Roadmaps and the Leadership Development Framework to support educators in their career progression and professional development.

To attract and retain educators, ECDA has been working with preschool operators to make early childhood education an attractive profession of choice. We raised salaries of early childhood educators in Government-supported preschools to keep pace with market wages and professional skills. We also improved the well-being of early childhood educators by designating Teachers' Day and Children's Day as preschool holidays from 2024 and removing the requirement for childcare centres to operate on Saturdays from 2025.

To ensure that other related sectors, particularly the social service sector, have sufficient manpower, the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) works closely with the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), as well as other Government agencies, to coordinate our efforts. Ultimately, the various sectors have to ensure that they offer competitive remuneration and good working conditions, while motivating their staff well.

MSF and ECDA will continue to monitor the planned expansion of preschool services and work closely with relevant stakeholders to ensure a sufficient supply of quality early childhood educators.

Mr Speaker: Ms Phua.

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng (Jalan Besar): I thank the Minister of State for the reply. I have mixed feelings when I received the news about the increase in preschool placements. On one hand, of course, I am very happy about the additional places. On the other hand, I am really worried about the manpower situation, especially if it is seen as a competition for talents or manpower and those who have deeper pockets will have the advantage, compared to others who have not.

So, my question is, at national level, who is MSF working with, beyond NCSS, because there are also other sectors that require such manpower. And also, is there an overall manpower kind of demand and supply masterplan which reflect on strategies to update the skills to grow the whole pie, or even to change immigration policies and so forth, so that there is less competition, while everybody is able to grow the pie, to meet national needs?

Ms Sun Xueling: I thank the Member for her supplementary question. I think, indeed, the reality that we see in Singapore is that we do have a manpower and "women-power" crunch. There are many industries out there who are looking for skilled talents to fill places.

So, in relation to the question that she asked, apart from MSF who holds discussions with NCSS, there are also regular discussions between MSF and the Ministry of Manpower, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, to take a holistic look at what are the manpower needs of the entire economy. At the same time, the Ministries also touch base with the Institutes of Higher Learning to ensure that there are relevant courses for young students, so that when they graduate, there are meaningful jobs for them. So, there is this whole-of-Government effort to look at manpower planning.

Mr Speaker: Mr Desmond Choo.

Mr Desmond Choo (Tampines): I thank the Minister of State for her reply. It is comforting to know that plans are afoot to support our early childhood educators.

When we want to bring in a lot more manpower to support the expansion, one of the key issues will be wages and wages will naturally have to go up, because there will be competition from other sectors to attract them into this space. How would the Ministry ensure that the fees continue to be affordable to young parents, even as they are better supported with more places? How do we ensure that for the providers, their margins are still viable for them to be sustainable, so that services will not be interrupted, even as fees via the increase in wages go up?

Ms Sun Xueling: I thank the Member for his supplementary questions. There are actually two tracks that are happening. First, on wages. In 2022, ECDA had conducted a review of the salaries of early childhood educators to ensure that their salaries are commensurate with their contributions as well as professional skills. We had announced this. This was greeted with much joy. I think many of the early childhood educators felt that their contributions were being appreciated. I also shared that, together with wage increases, there were also targeted moves at making sure that their working conditions are attractive as well.

The second part of the Member's question relates to the fees that are paid by parents with preschool-going children. Under the anchor operator scheme, the Government and MSF provide subsidies to the preschool operators for them to keep fee caps, which we have announced before. These fee caps essentially ensure the affordability of preschool education for parents. In fact, over the past two years, we have been steadily reducing those fee caps, meaning that parents actually pay less per year, per month, for preschool expenses, which also translates to less out-of-pocket expenses for parents.

So, both these tracks are ongoing: one, to uplift wages; second, to increase subsidies to preschool operators to make sure that they adhere to fee caps, which are decreasing, so that out-of-pocket expenses from parents are decreasing on a year-to-year basis. And what, in total, that actually means is that the Government is putting in a lot of money to subsidise the preschool sector for the educators as well as the parents.

Mr Speaker: Mr Melvin Yong.

Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye (Radin Mas): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister of State for her response. I share Ms Denise Phua's concern about manpower manning. I have received feedback from some preschool educators that they are not being allowed to leave their centres to have their lunch. They are required to eat in and at the same time, keep an eye on their charges. I think this possibly due to manpower shortages.

Is ECDA aware of this situation, and if so, what is ECDA doing to help some of these operators to beef up their manpower? Because I think that working conditions are often crucial in retaining staff and I believe that having a proper meal break is important.

Ms Sun Xueling: I totally agree with the Member that when we talk about working conditions, it also includes things like rest days, the number of hours they have to put into taking care of their charges and definitely, having their lunch in an appropriate environment.

One thing that ECDA has done is that, in October 2024, ECDA had appointed service providers to offer affordable and reliable relief staff services to all preschools. We recognise that for individual preschools, there may be situations whereby they may, on specific days or specific months, have a manpower crunch due to a variety of issues – it could be about allocation of staff between centres, it could be a key staff going on sick leave and so on and so forth.

So, when such incidents happen, it is very difficult for MSF to always react to individual cases, because we have close to 1,900 preschools across the whole of Singapore. Fundamentally, I think what we should do, as a matter of policy is to work with the industry to ensure that there is a relief pool of manpower that the preschools are able to call upon to plug short-term manpower shortages at individual centres.