THE Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) is making a greater push to raise the quality of child care here, Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told Parliament yesterday.
Over the next year, it will set up a unit called the Childhood Development Network which will have full-time staff with experience in the early childhood care and education sector.
The unit will provide technical assistance and consultancy to childcare centres, and professional guidance and career counselling to educators in childcare centres. It will also support and disseminate research about child care, and enhance public education about early childhood development.
These measures come on top of several others in recent years, such as funding scholarships for childcare educators, setting standards so that three in every four teachers in every childcare centre will have to obtain at least a diploma in early childhood care and education by January 2013, and adding 200 centres by 2013.
By 2011, the MCYS will also establish a framework to improve the quality of child care for infants and young children aged three and below.
It will review the professional training, licensing requirements and quality standards for the care of infants and toddlers up to 18 months.
Looking into this is a 15-member advisory committee comprising medical experts, practitioners, researchers, industry representatives and government agencies.
The MCYS also plans to give more support to the recruitment of new childcare teachers and training for current teachers.
It will be extending the reccurent grant for anchor non-profit childcare operators announced last year - those that are eligible include PCF and NTUC First Campus - and the grant is projected to reach $30 million by 2013.
For in-service teachers, the MCYS will work with the Workforce Development Agency and other agencies to upgrade their skills and knowledge.
The ministry is allocating $215 million for infant care and childcare subsidies, and another $51.9 million to support the industry, for instance, through grants and scholarships.
Childcare operators and educators welcomed the move to boost the sector.
Mr Chan Tee Seng, chief executive officer of NTUC First Campus which runs 68 childcare centres, said it was encouraged to see the 'sustained efforts by the Government to make early childhood education an attractive and meaningful career'.
Parents like Ms Colleen Tan, 37, an office manager - who has two daughters, aged five and three, in child care - supported the push, though she was concerned that it might translate into higher costs.
On the upside, she said, it would give more confidence to parents who had no choice but to use child care: 'I don't think any mother would leave her child - especially one so young - in the care of strangers unless she really had no options.'
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
