Adjournment Motion: Fund the Child, Not the School: A Proposal for Fairer and More Diverse Preschool Education
delivered on 14th October 2025
Mr Speaker, since serving as an MP, I have seen firsthand the impact of national policies on small, independent preschools in my division. As a parent of young children, I feel these issues acutely. Their voices warn of a serious problem: the quiet extinction of diversity in our preschools.
Many young parents may have read in CNA of a spate of preschool closures over the last few years—at least six reported in the past two years alone, and there are many that go unreported. I will explain why.
(The Landscape)
Mr Speaker, let us first understand the landscape. In 2013, the Early Childhood Development Agency—or ECDA—was formed under MSF to raise preschool standards. Under it, two major schemes now dominate the sector.
First, the Anchor Operator scheme or A-OPs. Five large, government-supported operators: PCF Sparkletots, NTUC My First Skool, E-Bridge, Skool4Kidz, and M.Y World. They receive significant grant funding and priority HDB site allocation in exchange for capping fees and meeting quality requirements.
Second, the Partner Operator scheme or P-OPs. These are mid-sized players with slightly higher fee caps but similar obligations.
Together, these two schemes have grown at a staggering rate. Today, over 53% of all preschools in Singapore are either an Anchor or Partner Operator. PCF and NTUC My First Skool alone account for at least 30% of all preschools. The Government has stated that over 65% of preschoolers are in government-supported preschools, with a target of around 80% by 2025.
There is another angle of competition, coming directly from MOE. MOE Kindergartens or MKs were launched in 2014, and are co-located within primary schools. A major draw for parents is priority under Phase 2A of P1 registration for the primary school which creates a “through-train” for P1 admission. There are now 56 MKs. You may know some of these primary schools: Temasek, Princess Elizabeth, Gongshang. This has pulled students away from independent preschools.
Independent operators face a pincer movement. From MSF and ECDA: anchor and partner operators who receive significant fiscal funding and preferential allocation to HDB sites with much lower rent. From MOE: kindergartens operating with the full backing of the national budget, no binding constraint of rental costs, and a compelling competitive advantage—an implicit pathway into the affiliated primary school. In this environment, even church kindergartens, who have been operating for decades, paying zero rent to use church premises, are also shutting down, halving from over 200 centres 10 years ago to over 100 today. As one operator told me: “Even zero rent also cannot survive.”
The direction of travel is clear: the “middle tier” of independent preschools is shrinking.
(The Problem)
Mr Speaker, I support making preschools affordable and raising educators’ wages. But the method of direct operator subsidies used to achieve them has inadvertently created a deeply distorted market.
The unfairness comes from the way subsidies are given.
There are two types of subsidies. The first is the parent-level subsidy, which many parents will know. The Basic Childcare Subsidy provides a transparent and fair offset of 150 to 300 dollars per month for any citizen child in an ECDA-licensed centre..
But the second far more opaque category of operator-level subsidy is largely implemented through direct fiscal transfers. On the MSF side, this is only available to A-Ops and P-Ops. On the MOE Kindergarten side, this comes directly from the MOE national budget. This is a direct transfer to these chosen government-supported operators, and no one else.
The Government’s method has thus not created a level playing field; it has created a trap. For independent operators, this trap has three walls.
First, they Cannot Remain. They face dwindling enrollment due to the breakneck expansion of A-Ops and MKs, which use unequal fiscal grants to offer lower fees. Simultaneously, these state-backed centers create a net talent drain by offering higher salaries, leaving independents to struggle with rising rental costs and a fight for survival.
Second, they Cannot Consolidate. Some say, “Join the Partner Operator scheme.” as this is the intended way for private operators to enter the government-supported umbrella . For many, this is a difficult choice. A. The consortium requirement means they must expose their books to one another. One lead holds the purse strings, and counterparty risk is high. B. The selection criteria is opaque - if rejected, ECDA provides no reason, and no feedback. C. There is commercial lock-in: once fees are capped under the P-OP scheme, exiting is near-impossible as parents will likely not accept a reversion to significantly higher fees.
Third, many Cannot Sell. For many operators in HDB sites, the inability to sell their businesses is a frustrating obstacle. Transfer of lease requires HDB and ECDA approval, but rejections are given without reasons. One operator’s sale was blocked with the vague, one-sentence justification that the new owner could not “ensure the continuity of care and education,” leaving them with no path of appeal.
Cannot remain. Cannot consolidate. Cannot sell.
The only path left is to shut down. And that is what many do. So this quiet extinction continues.
Mr Speaker, this is not right. Many private operators started with good intentions to provide a way of education for their kids, pouring their life savings and their passion into creating nurturing spaces. But today, many feel trapped.
(Three Questions for the Government)
Speaker, let me state plainly what many operators believe. They suspect the government wants to nationalize the sector. They ask three questions, and they deserve straight answers:
Question One: Does the government want standardized, cookie-cutter early education? Many feel the push for A-Ops and MKs penalizes operators who offer unique models—small teacher-child ratios, project-based learning, Montessori, Reggio Emilia, faith-based schools—that don’t fit the standard mold.
Question Two: Does the government wish to nationalize this sector? Because if the intention is not nationalization, why are these features present: A-OP share increasing, M-K count increasing, share of children served by A-OPs, P-OPs and MKs targeted to be 80% by 2025, and no articulated vision for the independent sector beyond its “managed-decline”?
Question Three: Is the government’s ideal outcome a kindergarten market dominated by MOE Kindergartens, with the pre-kindergarten market dominated by major anchor operators?
Mr Speaker, let me give a further example of why operators perceive a deep lack of fairness in the system, and raises questions about whether ECDA’s actions serve the entire sector equitably.
On 29 October 2022, MSF Minister Masagos announced significant pay rises for educators in A-Ops. However, long-standing ECDA rules require that fee increases for the following year must be notified by 1st September of the previous year. So fee notifications for 2023 had to be submitted by 1st September 2022.
This timing trapped private operators: they were locked out of adjusting fees to match the new wage benchmarks, yet were immediately exposed to talent poaching by A-Ops offering the pay rises.
I ask the Ministry to clarify if any transitional provisions were made for private operators caught by this announcement.
(The Human Cost)
Mr Speaker, the human cost of this system starts with our children and radiates outwards to their teachers, their parents, and finally, all of us as taxpayers.
At the centre are the children. While I have great admiration for those who work in A-Ops and MKs, which have good programs on STEM and public speaking, we must acknowledge these systems’ flaws. High teacher-child ratios mean less individual attention. Furthermore, MSF’s top-down directives to include neurodiverse children create chaotic environments. The typical A-Op setting, with its bright white lights, cluttered displays, and high noise levels, is often unsuited for the neurodiverse, and in turn, diverts resources from neurotypical children who must learn in a more disrupted environment.
The educational philosophy itself is also narrowing. MKs increasingly run a standardised program as their principals focus on P1 readiness and “school-ify” our young children. I do not blame them, if their KPIs are more for P1 results over preschool creativity, the push for P1 readiness will almost always win.
But we should have the space to “let children be children”. The accelerated roll-out of MKs with priority P1 admission, feeds parental anxiety and creates focus on academic readiness over holistic development. Mr Speaker, we should be preparing children not for Primary 1, but for life.
There is an immense cost placed upon our teachers, who are on the frontlines of a system breeding burnout. They navigate an unstable market, with centres shutting down left and right, and are increasingly pushed into “cookie-cutter” state-led models that kill their passion for teaching. They manage large K2 classes of 25 children, and find it hard to give individualised attention. They spend precious time dealing with paperwork and writing incident reports instead of teaching. And they operate in a “kiasi” culture, driven by conservative interpretations of ECDA circulars. This is a culture where pencils must be stored lying flat for safety, where operators are afraid to let children taste prata during cultural lessons. This high-stress, low-trust model is unsustainable. I am told by both teachers and operators that it is causing many teachers to burnout and leave the A-Op system, often after bonuses are paid. While I do not have official data, the anecdotal attrition estimates shared with me are concerningly high.
This brings us to the cost for parents: a severe diminution of choice. As independent operators close, parents lose access to the diversity that could offer a refuge from these systemic flaws.
Finally, there is a cost to all of us as taxpayers. The current funding model is entirely opaque. Without transparency on operator-level subsidies, it is impossible to assess the true cost and efficiency of these schemes. Worse, we may be funding wasteful competition. In some estates like Punggol and Jurong West, multiple A-Ops are clustered together in a small area, all “fighting for numbers” , displaying what they in China call involution or neijuan: a zero-sum game of wasteful competition.
(The Solution)
Mr Speaker, the fundamental problem is that MSF and MOE are relying on operators—A-Ops, P-Ops, MKs—to uplift the sector instead of genuinely implementing sector-wide reforms. Their three policy goals—affordability, increasing educator salaries, and quality assurance —are rolled out via chosen operators.
I will lay out a sector-wide reform without biasing towards particular operators.
First: we must “Fund the Child, Not the School”.
Let subsidies follow the child. Instead of funneling opaque grants to select operators, we can create a portable preschool voucher that bundles all public support into a transparent, per-child amount. Parents can use it at any licensed center.
This empowers parents to choose a preschool that best fits their child’s needs—be it PCF, Montessori, faith-based organizations, or play-based centers. It forces all schools, including state-backed giants, to compete fairly on quality, philosophy, service; without predetermining the winner’s business model.
In fact, this is not a radical leap, because ECDA moved from funding A-Ops based on centre capacity to a per-child funding model earlier this year. This principle should be expanded to all operators, not just A-Ops.
On fee control: The government may fear subsidy capture—that operators will absorb the voucher without lowering fees. Let me offer a different view. The surest way to keep fees in check is to keep the market open and contestable. A January 2024 study on childcare in Minnesota found that when you fund parents directly, the market finds a way to create more supply. They found that increased voucher funding led to more providers entering the market, an expansion of available slots, and only modest price increases.
This is what a healthy responsive market looks like. It is diversity—and the capacity of all to scale—that gives a market supply-elasticity. A system where operators “Cannot Remain, Cannot Consolidate, and Cannot Sell” would create inelasticity and potential future subsidy capture.
This is not a leap into the unknown. Australia runs a portable, per-child subsidy—the Child Care Subsidy—that follows the child to any approved service. It is paid to providers to reduce the bill, and is governed by a published rate cap that limits the total subsidised amount. Portable funding across operators , transparent reference prices, and quality assurance can coexist.
By contrast, the current system is highly susceptible to subsidy capture— with chosen operators capturing massive unequal subsidies that may not reach parents as choice or quality improvements. With vouchers, parents can control where the money goes.
This will fix the school-level market where subsidies distort operator competition.
Second: Embed Policy Goals in the Voucher.
Speaker, the government’s instinct is to solve every preschool problem—from teacher pay to special needs—by leaning on its chosen operators. This creates a two-tier system by design. Every preschool policy target begins to look for an operator-led solution.
There is a better way. We can use voucher supplements to achieve these policy targets while preserving a contestable market.
For teacher wages: instead of selective grants, we can offer a ‘wage supplement’ to the voucher for any centre that pays its teachers above certain benchmarks. The higher the pay, the larger the supplement. We can enforce this transparently using CPF data to verify wages and NIEC [National Institute of Early Childhood Development] standards to ensure teacher quality. It turns every operator into a potential partner in raising standards.
For special needs: the same principle applies. Instead of forcing top-down integration, we give every child with assessed needs a portable, ring-fenced voucher supplement, based on their assessed needs, such as specialized teachers, lower ratios, or sensory-friendly environments. This funding follows the child, empowering parents of neurodiverse children to choose centres with resources to provide proper support. It will also allow the emergence of specialized centres.
Some may point to Hong Kong, which once had a pure flat-rate voucher system, but moved away from it in 2017. Among the reasons given for moving away were ineffectiveness for raising teacher pay, addressing special needs, and helping low-income families. In my assessment, the HK system’s flaw lay more with the flat rate, than the voucher system itself. We can learn from this by using targeted funding supplements for these policy targets: lower-income families, special needs, teacher wages.
Three: Contestable Sites for Public Benefit.
Mr Speaker, Singapore has unique policy levers that many other systems, including Hong Kong’s, do not - such as our stock of preferential allocation sites at HDB estates and primary schools.
I believe we must make access to these locations fair and contestable. The principle should be simple: public sites for public benefit. We can open up tenders for new preschool sites in HDB estates and kindergarten spaces within our primary schools, making it a core contractual requirement that any winning bidder must adhere to a strict fee cap. This ensures the public subsidy on rent is passed on directly to parents as affordability.”
I propose two pilots. First, MSF and MND to run a sector-wide, open tender for the next batch of preschool sites in new HDB estates. Second, MOE to pilot this same open-tender model in a small number of primary schools—say, five initially—inviting all qualified operators to compete.
(What We Need From Government)
Mr Speaker, in closing, I ask this government for the following:
First, to answer the three questions:
A. Does the government want standardized, cookie-cutter early education?
B. Does the government want to nationalize this sector?
C. Is the government’s ideal outcome an A-Op to MK nationalized model?
Second, fairness: to clarify ECDA’s actions in October 2022 regarding the wage announcement timing, and to commit to level-playing field policies going forward. This means dismantling the walls of the trap that operators find themselves in. Allow them to Consolidate by providing detailed P-Op selection criteria and right of appeal. Allow them to Sell their preschools.
Third, to implement the three-pillar reform: A portable voucher system to fund the child, not the school. A tiered voucher supplement system that embeds policy goals like better teacher pay and special needs support. And a fair and contestable process for allocating preferential sites, with fee caps as a firm condition.
Mr Speaker, this Government mentions how the world is becoming more uncertain. At this juncture, enforcing an educational monoculture is exactly the wrong philosophy toward an uncertain world. We need more diversity, not less.
I appeal to the Government’s sense of fairness and to parents’ lived experience: let us not allow this quiet extinction to continue. If we have five more years of this, I think there will be nothing left to save. Let us shift our focus from creating national champions to nurturing a vibrant and resilient preschool ecosystem for all our children.
Let us be pro-child, pro-teacher, pro-market, pro-diversity.
Thank you.