Progress on Plan to Set up School-based Student Care Centres in Primary Schools

5 Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked the Minister for Education (Schools) (a) what is the progress on the setting up of school-based Student Care Centres (SCCs) in all primary schools; (b) whether the Ministry is seeing increasing demand for more places; and (c) whether the Ministry has plans to increase the number of places in each school.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministers for Education (Ms Low Yen Ling) (for the Minister for Education (Schools)):Mdm Speaker, after-school care is a golden opportunity to enhance and enrich our children's values, growth and character. Student Care Centres (SSCs) play an important role with their after-school support. Within five years, MOE has steadily increased the number of school-based SCCs from less than 50 to 147 centres today, which means 77% of our Primary schools have SCCs. Overall enrolment has risen steadily from about 3,000 to more than 18,000 students.

MOE is on track to open SCCs in all Primary schools by end 2020. The provision of school-based SCC places has largely kept pace with demand as the majority of the schools do not have waitlists. For the schools with a waitlist, the average number of students on a waitlist is less than 10.

But having said that, I want to assure the Member that MOE will continue to monitor the demand for school-based SCC places and work with our schools to improve the accessibility of SCCs through the setting up of new SCCs as well as expanding capacity for existing ones, where appropriate, and also at a pace that does not compromise quality of the after-school care.

Mr Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah): Madam, I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for sharing the very impressive numbers. The enrolment numbers for SCCs increasing from 3,000 to 18,000 is a six-fold increase. Parents I spoke to appreciate the SCC support as this makes their lives better as working parents. I sense that the demand will continue to rise. So, I want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether does MOE has plans to further scale up both SCCs for within the school as well as those that are inside the schools. Would MOE work with some of the VWOs who are interested to set up SCCs which they slowed or stopped since the school-based SCCs were introduced? Thirdly, there is more demand and I think if MOE can increase the effort, that would really help parents especially the working the working parents.

Ms Low Yen Ling:I want to thank the Member, Mr Liang, for his supplementary questions and also sharing the observation and feedback from the residents. We certainly agree that after-school care is a crucial period for influence and care where values and children's learning can be reinforced after school hours. It is certainly MOE's priority to ensure that a nurturing environment is availed to the students who most need after-school care, where they can grow and flourish after school.

We appreciate the observation that is shared with us, arising from residents' feedback. Maybe allow me to share some numbers. Out of 147 SCCs in the Primary schools now, 45% of the SCCs are operated by VWOs. So, 45% of the 147 centres are operated by VWOs and the remaining 55% of the centres are operated by private sector commercial operators. I wish to assure Mr Liang and the House that the current rate of expansion meets demand. We also recognise that demand may vary from school to school and from area to area. We work very closely with the school principals who will know, would have a good pulse check on the demand for SCC places in the school arising from meetings with parents and parents' feedback.

In places of higher demand, MOE works closely with the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) as well as our SCC operators, be it the VWOs or the private sector operators to increase capacity where were can. I have shared two ways where we can increase capacity. Number one, open up a SCC in remaining Primary schools and that will be another 43 more, to cover the total number of 190 Primary schools by year 2020. Another way we can inject capacity is to increase capacity in existing centre. Certainly, the school will be happy to work with the operators to provide them more classrooms so that they can extend capacity but it is not just the hardware; the software is also important. We want to make sure that as we expand capacity, we are also not compromising the quality of care given to our students.

I want to assure Mr Liang that the two Ministries will continue to work closely to monitor the capacity as well as the demand for SCC places across school-based centres as well as community-based centres. This is especially so for children who lack such a home environment after-school for various reasons. We do that because we know that with after-school support, from schools and community, more parents would be able to work with peace of mind knowing that their kids receive good care after school. And to this end, we will be happy to work Mr Liang to look at the needs of his constituency so that families and also students receive quality after-school care.

Mdm Speaker : Mr Leon Perera.

Mr Leon Perera (Non-Constituency Member): Thank you, Madam. Just two supplementary questions for the Parliamentary Secretary. Does MOE play some role in reviewing the programmes that the SCCs run to level up in terms of the quality of their programmes and to share learnings as to the quality of the programmes? And my second question is on students with special needs. Are teachers in, at least some of these SCCs, trained to provide the appropriate care for students with different types of special needs?

Ms Low Yen Ling:The MOE team works closely with the MSF team to support the Student Care Officers (SCOs) working in the Student Care Centres to provide care for the student after-school hours. And we also work with them to provide professional development support. To this end, in August 2015, the MOE signed an MOU with the four self-help groups − CDAC, MENDAKI, SINDA and Eurasian Association (EA). And under the MOU, the four self-help groups have set up a joint venture company in November 2015 and they aim to set up 30 Student Care Centres that would be owned by the self-help groups, which are also considered VWOs. So, they will set up 30 Student Care Centres by year 2020.

The self-help groups are happy to report to MOE that to-date, January 2017, they have already hit 50% of their target. They already have Student Care Centres in 15 schools to provide care for students who most need this. The MOE, together with the self-help groups as well as the other operators, are also looking at how to facilitate sharing of best practices for the Student Care Officers.

To the second question on special needs, based on the feedback from parents, they see a lot of benefits of having their children stay in a Student Care Centre in a school-based environment because it is within the school premises and this where the principal or what we call the Allied Educator (AED) will be able to bridge the communications with the Student Care Officers with regard to the learning needs or learning difficulties of certain students in the SCCs and provide relevant support to them. The support as being given is not just support from the MOE side but also the relevant disability division in MSF.