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By Elaine Ee
Article taken from inSing.com.
Finally, the government is addressing the issue of preschool education in Singapore.
It has set up a committee to improve preschool education, and will also set up a statutory board to help develop and regulate this sector.
It’s all good, hopefully. But a major fundamental issue remains unaddressed here, one that puts a huge load on parents with children in preschool - the fees.
Paying preschool fees falls largely on the shoulders of the parents. Even with subsidies and the Baby Bonus’ dollar-for-dollar savings scheme, the tab that is left for the parents to pick up is still significant, because what is considered low-cost for one household may be high-cost to another. It’s all relative. A household with very low income will still find post-subsidy preschool fees a real pinch.
And for parents to benefit from the Baby Bonus savings scheme, it depends on how much money they contribute to the scheme in the first place. That is something that better-off parents naturally find easier to do.
Subsidies are given for a certain period of time, and may or may not be renewed, so while they offer temporary relief as needed - and as intended and determined by the government agency that is giving them out - they are not a security blanket.
Subsidies also tend to be fixed dollar amounts, meaning that parents are not protected against fee increases, which happen from time to time. In June 2011, for instance, it was reported that a number of PAP Community Foundation (PCF) kindergartens - which cater to those who find private preschools too expensive - were planning on increasing their school fees because they were losing money and struggling to meet rising operational costs.
On a rough average, a full day preschool programme sets parents back about $700 a month per child. Much cheaper options, such as PCF kindergartens, charge about $100 a month. On the other end of the spectrum, more expensive options cost well more than $1,000 a month per child.
A lot of the stress of paying these fees evaporates once a child enters primary school, because the Education Ministry starts to bear most of the cost of educating a child - and continues to do this through secondary school and junior college - so this is not passed on to parents.
It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to educate a primary school child, but parents are not charged any school fees at all. Some pay only miscellaneous fees that never exceed $11 a month, and a part of this can be paid through Edusave, a government fund that pays for enrichment programmes or extra resources.
In secondary school, fees are $5 a month and miscellaneous fees are capped at $16 a month. Junior college fees are $6 a month, and miscellaneous fees capped at $22 a month. These fees are very affordable. They apply to all Singaporean parents, regardless of income, with subsidies available to those who find even these fees difficult to pay.
Can this approach not be extended to preschool education?
The majority of preschool costs could be borne by the government and not passed on to the parents - who contribute to government revenue anyway through the various taxes that they pay, including Goods and Services Tax, which has risen steadily since it was introduced in 1994.
If we already provide free or close-to-free education for 12 years of a child’s education, can we not do it for a few years more - at least the two years of kindergarten, if not the two nursery years as well?
One could implement this with existing preschools, using accreditation and certification to take them all to whatever is considered a decent and consistent standard, including those run by non-profit organisations.
There would still be room for those preschools that prefer to operate in the privatised sphere outside government funding and that want to charge what they will for those who can afford to pay.
This would remove a huge source of stress for parents with young children, make it just that bit easier. And take Singapore one step closer to being a place where people want to have and raise children.
(The views and opinions expressed by the author and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of publichouse.sg, inSing.com and SingTel Digital Media Ptd Ltd.)