我们还从家长那里了解到，孩子在婴幼儿时期是最具挑战性的时期。为了更好地支持家长照顾婴儿，政府将与服务提供商合作，推出婴儿托管服务，为家长提供另一种照顾选择。我们将提供资金，使家长能够负担得起托儿服务。为确保婴幼儿得到妥善照顾，幼儿保育署将进行背景调查，并要求经营者符合服务要求，以确保婴幼儿的安全。幼儿保育署还将与经营者合作，共同制定行业标准。这包括规定什么是安全的托儿环境，以及经营者和托儿所各自的责任。
有发展需求儿童的家长也需要更多的支持，以帮助他们的孩子充分发挥潜能。要做好这项工作，家长需要掌握在家中提供早期干预支持的技能。因此，我们将推出一项 "早期干预--关爱"（EIPIC-Care）试点项目，这是一项针对两到三岁有发展需求儿童的看护者的培训计划。对于有更高需求的儿童，我们将继续增加政府资助的名额，以满足需要中高水平早期干预支持的儿童的需求。
(用英语）：正如马善高部长所分享的，我们所有人都必须发挥自己的作用，以实现我们的愿景，即建设一个关爱家庭的社会和一个 "齐心为了家 "的新加坡。
我们看到许多志愿者与专业人员一起为有需要的家庭提供支持。玛莎（Marsha Hernatasha）女士和齐斯蒂娜（Qistina Mohamed Nasir）女士是朋友，她们是幼儿培育辅导计划（KidSTART）园艺奇观项目的义工。作为义工，她们负责接待 KidSTART 家庭、包装和分发礼品袋，并在讲故事环节中与孩子们互动。玛莎女士和齐斯蒂娜女士认为，志愿服务是做善事和回馈幼儿家庭的好机会。我们将 2024 年定为 "欢庆义工年"，让我们感谢并认可志愿者的贡献、努力和牺牲。
我们致力于支持我们的父母和准父母，让他们放心，每个孩子在新加坡都能有一个良好的人生开端，并能公平地获得人生进步的机会。
以下是英文质询内容：
COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY – HEAD I (MINISTRY OF SOCIAL AND FAMILY DEVELOPMENT)
(Building a caring and inclusive society together)
The Chairman: Minister of State Sun Xueling.
The Minister of State for Social and Family Development (Ms Sun Xueling): Mr Chairman, I thank Members for their views.
The Government is committed to providing every child with a good start in life. Preschools play an important role in supporting our children's development while meeting parents' caregiving needs. This is an important part of our vision in realising a Singapore Made for Families.
Ms Yeo Wan Ling and Assoc Prof Jamus Lim asked how we will make preschools accessible and affordable for families. The Government provides funding to Anchor and Partner Operators to ensure that they keep within fee caps, while investing in quality improvements. The Government also provides all parents with basic subsidies, as well as additional subsidies for eligible families. Currently, lower-income families can pay as low as $3 per month for childcare in an Anchor Operator preschool. This comprehensive approach to preschool affordability, where we keep fees charged for Government-supported preschools low and provide childcare subsidies to parents, is more effective than giving vouchers.
We will further enhance preschool affordability in the coming years. As announced by Deputy Prime Minister Wong in his Budget speech, we will further reduce childcare fee caps at Anchor and Partner Operators by $40 in 2025. After subsidies, a middle-income working household with monthly income of $8,000, will pay $208 for full-day childcare at an Anchor Operator preschool from 2025, around 18% less from what they pay today.
We will make a final reduction in 2026. This will help us to achieve our 2019 National Day Rally commitment where families enrolled in Anchor Operators pay similar expenses to that of primary school and after-school student care, before means-tested subsidies. We are also on track to increasing the number of Government-supported preschool places so that 80% of preschoolers can have a place in a Government-supported preschool by around 2025, up from over 65% today.
Mr Melvin Yong asked how we will continue to attract and retain early childhood educators to support the sector. The well-being of our educators is important to us. Our educators dedicate themselves to the nurturing of our children and play a critical role in driving the quality of care and education for our young children.
ECDA has been enhancing the career proposition of early childhood educators. We announced the Continuing Professional Development Roadmap in 2021 and the Leadership Development Framework as well as salary improvements in 2022. We will continue to monitor and review to ensure educators' salaries remain competitive.
We are also improving the working conditions and well-being of educators. From 2024, similar to Primary Schools, Teacher's Day and Children's Day will be designated as preschool holidays. The existing six days of preschool closure have also been repositioned as "Development Days" to give educators dedicated time to focus on their individual and team development. From 2025, childcare centres are no longer required to operate on Saturdays. With this, preschool teachers will have an additional half-day of rest every week.
To attract more Singaporeans to the sector, ECDA is relaunching the "Shape Our Tomorrow" campaign in 2024 to strengthen the public's understanding of the early childhood (EC) sector and recognise EC educators as a respected profession. Since its launch in 2018, the number of EC educators has increased by more than 30% to 25,000.
Ms Carrie Tan also suggested the SPARK certification process be reviewed to reduce educators' workload. SPARK is an accreditation framework to guide preschools in raising their quality, such as in the areas of teaching and learning and administration and management of centres. The number of SPARK-certified preschools has been growing over the years and stands at 1,000 preschools or 58% of the sector today.
ECDA is reviewing SPARK and plans to roll out the refreshed SPARK certification in 2025 to set the next bound of quality for our preschools. To reduce workload on educators, we are exploring various ways to keep the work required for SPARK certification manageable, such as streamlining requirements and tapping on technology to reduce the documentation and administraton work involved.
Ms Tin Pei Ling touched on child safety in preschools. Preschools must be a safe and nurturing environment for our children. ECDA ensures that our educators have the necessary qualifications and skills to effectively and safely care for and educate children. Besides basic screening requirements and health declarations, all educators must meet the academic, professional and language requirements before they can be certified by ECDA and deployed in our preschools. As part of these requirements, educators must undergo training programmes where they learn classroom management strategies.
ECDA also regularly updates the training curriculum of the teachers. We have recently made it clearer with more specific examples on what constitutes inappropriate behaviour to guide our educators. There are also regular sector-wide briefings and circulars to update educators on the latest research and teaching pedagogies.
Where there is negligence from operators, ECDA will take them to task with regulatory fines and levers. Where individual teachers have committed offences, they will be charged by the Police and punished under the Children and Young Persons Act and/or the Penal Code. ECDA's powers are enforced through the Early Childhood Development Centres Act. ECDA will review enforcement levers and fines currently stipulated through the ECDC Act and will not hesitate to enhance the levers through legislative changes to take errant operators to task. We are working on this right now even as I speak.
