01/10/2016

New Manpower Plan Unveiled To Create More Rewarding Careers For Early Childhood Educators

A new Early Childhood Manpower Plan was announced today by Minister for Social and Family Development, Mr Tan Chuan-Jin, at the Early Childhood Conference 2016. An annual event organised by the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), the conference was attended by over 1,200 educators this year.

The Early Childhood Manpower Plan is part of the national SkillsFuture movement and is a collaborative effort by ECDA, the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA), as well as key sector partners represented on the Early Childhood Sectoral Tripartite Committee. It reflects inputs and suggestions from educators, employers and parents. With this plan, ECDA hopes to attract another 4,000 educators to join the sector by 2020, from around 16,000 today.

Overall, the Early Childhood Manpower Plan envisions a sector that offers meaningful and rewarding careers for Singaporeans, and quality care and education for our children. To achieve this, it outlines three strategies to enable educators to have more opportunities to develop professionally, a more supportive working environment, and greater respect and recognition. This plan also builds on ongoing efforts to develop and support early childhood educators at every stage of their careers.

More Opportunities to develop professionally

The Early Childhood Manpower Plan provides more opportunities for individuals to join and develop in their early childhood careers. In addition to existing initiatives to attract and develop early childhood professionals (See Annex), new initiatives that were announced today include:

1. A new Skills Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education, which spells out enhanced career pathways as well as specific skills and competencies required for various job roles under the Educarer, Teacher and Leader tracks. It was developed in collaboration with the educators, employers, education and training institutions (which include UniSIM, three Polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education), union and associations in the early childhood sector. It will guide job seekers, educators and employers to plan skills and competency-based career development. ECDA and WDA will continue to work closely with employers to adopt the new Skills Framework in their HR frameworks and practices. Please refer to Annex A for details.
2. All Early Childhood educator training courses will now be made available in the Place-and-Train mode for mid-career entrants. Mid-career entrants can benefit from the WDA’s Professional Conversion Programmes (PCP) for Pre-school Teachers and Place-and-Train Programmes for Educarers, under the ADAPT and GROW initiative, to undergo training to attain competencies for a career in the Early Childhood profession while earning a salary.

To allow more opportunities for progression based on competencies gained rather than just academic qualifications, ECDA will recognize the prior learning and working experience of in-service educators who are keen to upgrade themselves through these training courses, and take on different educator job roles.

More supportive working environment

The Early Childhood Manpower Plan will also enable a more supportive working environment and more productive work processes for our educators. Presently, Association of Early Childhood and Training Services (ASSETS) is collaborating with ECDA and Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) to identify smart solutions to aid pre-schools in their day-to-day processes and streamline administrative duties for educators. These solutions will leverage technology to assist in knowledge management or improve productivity on administrative tasks. Please refer to Annex B for details. In addition, WDA has appointed ASSETS as a multiplier to engage the rest of the sectorin adopting innovative productivity solutions under the Lean Enterprise Development Scheme.

Greater respect and recognition

The Early Childhood Manpower Plan also aims to bring about greater respect for and recognition of our early childhood educators.

Early childhood educators play an important role in nurturing our youngest children, so as to enable them to have a good start in life. In recognition of their contributions, from 2017 onwards, ECDA will encourage and support all pre-schools to provide a day-off for early childhood educators on Teacher’s Day. ECDA will provide an additional half a day of closure for child care centres, on top of the five-and-half days of closure allowed currently, of which one day will be used to celebrate Teachers’ Day. Please refer to Annex C for details.

Annex A: Frequently Asked Questions for Skills Framework For Early Childhood Care And Education

Annex B: Call for Smart Solutions

Annex C: Teacher's Day Off

Annex D: Existing Early Childhood Manpower Intitiatives

Annex E: Early Childhood Conference 2016