SINGAPORE: The Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) will work with five anchor operators to open up nearly 40,000 new infant and childcare places in Singapore from 2025 to 2029.
This will include about 6,000 new infant care spots to cater to increased demand and it comes as part of ongoing efforts to enhance access to affordable and quality preschools in Singapore.
Announcing the move at the Early Childhood Celebrations event on Saturday (Nov 2), Minister for Social and Family Development Masagos Zulkifli said this will ensure that government-supported preschools can cater to 80 per cent of preschoolers in the medium term, up from the over 65 per cent currently.
As announced during this year’s Budget, full-day childcare fee caps at anchor and partner operators will be reduced by S$40 to S$640 and S$680 (US$510) per month respectively from Jan 1, 2025.
From Dec 9, 2024, all lower-income families with a gross monthly household income of S$6,000 and below will also qualify for the maximum amount of childcare subsidies for their income tier.
“This means that parents can expect to pay S$3 to S$115 or up to 2 per cent of their income for childcare at (anchor operators), with further reductions in 2025,” said Mr Masagos.
“I am happy to announce that this move will take effect from December this year. More than 17,000 additional children can benefit from this move.”
A new process to make preschool subsidy application more convenient will be rolled out in phases from Dec 9.
With it, parents will be able to apply for subsidies directly to ECDA digitally, instead of through preschools, via the LifeSG application.
GREATER AUTONOMY FOR PRESCHOOLS
A revised Singapore Preschool Accreditation Framework (SPARK) will also be implemented from January 2025.
This is to give preschools greater autonomy and ownership in developing and providing quality child-centric programmes, said ECDA in a news release on Saturday.
“Recognising the diverse early childhood landscape, SPARK 2.0 adopts a validation approach where preschools self-appraise their quality against standards and indicators set out in the new SPARK tool prior to seeking ECDA’s validation,” the agency said.
“Instead of specifying what preschools have to do, the quality standards and indicators prompt preschools to reflect on the intent and design of their programmes and activities in relation to their aspired goals, as well as children’s profiles and needs.”