One of the greatest concerns of modern urban parents is finding the right kind of child care outside the family home. The hunt for a trustworthy crèche or preschool keeps many new parents busy.
Such parents in Singapore can now rejoice, as the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) plans to open some 40,000 new infant and child care places in the next five years — from 2025 to 2029.
The autonomous ECDA was officially launched on April 1, 2013, and it is jointly overseen by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF).
A CNA report said that the Agency “will work with five anchor operators” to establish these new infant and child care places across Singapore. The report said that the move “comes as part of ongoing efforts to enhance access to affordable and quality preschools in Singapore”.
The report quoted Minister for Social and Family Development Masagos Zulkifli as saying that opening of the new centres would lead to a 15 per cent increase in the availability of government-supported preschools — up from the current 65 per cent to 80 per cent in the medium term.
In addition, to make early child care and preschool affordable, the Singapore Government has brought in measures to cap full-day child care fee (per month) at anchor and partner operators at SGD 640 and SGD 680, a cut of SGD 40 that will come into effect from January 1, 2025.
Moreover, from December 9, 2024, some financial benefits await families in Singapore with a gross monthly household income of SGD 6,000 or less. As they will qualify for the maximum amount of child care subsidies for their income tier, they will need to spend only 2 per cent of their monthly income on child care facilities run by anchor operators.
“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,” the minister was quoted as saying by CNA.
An ECDA press release informed the public: “To make preschool subsidy application more seamless, parents will be able to apply for subsidies directly to ECDA digitally, instead of through preschools, via the LifeSG application. This new process will be rolled out in phases from 9 December 2024.”
