By Fawwaz Baktee
To meet the needs of young working families in Singapore, NTUC’s My First Skool (MFS) announced that it aims to increase its childcare enrolment from the current 13,000 to 20,000 by 2020, representing an increase of nearly 50 per cent over a five-year period.
This effort was kick-started with the opening of the newest MFS childcare centre at Waterway Point on 15 March 2016. The 1648sqm centre will be able to accommodate some 375 children.
In the next few months, MFS will open three more childcare facilities that can each take in between 200 to 500 children.
These other centres will be in Edgefield Plains in Punggol, slated to open in the second quarter of this year, and Jurong West and Sengkang West, which are set to open in the third quarter.
Together with the new centres, MFS will be able to take over 2,000 more children by the end of 2016.
Quality Childcare
At the official opening of the Waterway Point MFS centre, NTUC Secretary-General Chan Chun Sing said: “MFS’ goal for the next five years is to make affordable and quality childcare services available in every neighbourhood.
“Our goal is to enable children, regardless of their family income or background, to have a good start in life. This is one of the ways that NTUC is caring for and supporting working families in Singapore.”
Having grown from 39 centres in 2009 with an enrolment of just 3,500 children, MFS today has 123 centres and serves four times the number of parents today than it did seven years ago.
MFS is one of three pre-schools under NTUC First Campus, with the others being The Little Skool House International and The Caterpillar Cove.
Building Future-Ready Pre-Schools
NTUC First Campus CEO Chan Tee Seng said that MFS is committed to investing in the raising the standard of MFS’ programmes to give parents access to high quality childcare close to their home.
To achieve this, Mr Chan mentioned four key areas of focus in the next two years: building strong parental engagement; strengthening the curriculum; enabling its teachers to deepen their skills in order to grow professionally; and enhancing the learning environment.
Rolling Out Enhancements
To strengthen the partnership with parents, MFS earlier this year introduced a new e-portal that feeds real-time updates to parents on their children’s learning and development progress in schools, complementing the half-yearly Parent-Teacher conferences.
In 2015, MFS rolled out the relationship-approach curriculum for the birth-to-three age group that develops the child’s sense of well-being and active involvement through fostering strong bonds between caregiver and child. The centre also introduced a first-of-its kind character building programme for the four to six age group to impart good values to children through daily activities.
MFS also said that it has been investing in regular training and development opportunities for its staff. The centre also aims to grow its number of staff from the current 3,500 to around 5,000 by 2020.
Touching on enhancing the physical learning environment, MFS said: “Moving forward, all of MFS’ pre-schools will be designed with flexible spaces to allow for varied learning activities, with spaces to facilitate parent-teacher communication, and designated resource rooms for teachers’ planning.”
Source: NTUC This Week
