Pre-School

Name and Constituency of  Member of Parliament

Mr Michael Palmer, MP for Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC 

Question

To ask the Minister of Education whether any steps will be taken to improve the standard of pre-school education and whether his Ministry intends to review and, if necessary, improve the present guidelines issued for pre-schools.

Response

1.  Since 2000, MOE has been taking steps to raise the quality of pre-school education, while maintaining the diversity in the sector. To do this, MOE has been focussing on the following four main areas of:

a) Improving the quality of pre-school educators.  The key to quality pre-school education is to have competent and confident pre-school teachers who are able to design and conduct engaging lessons and stimulating activities for their pupils. As such, MOE has been working with kindergartens to ensure that their teachers upgrade themselves to attain the required professional training and development to enable them to be more effective in the classrooms.
  
b) Providing a kindergarten curriculum framework. The framework establishes the outcomes and goals for pre-school education in Singapore, as well as a set of internationally accepted and established principles of early childhood education. MOE has also disseminated a teachers’ resource package to guide kindergartens in designing and conducting a suitable education programme for their pupils.
 
c) Conducting workshops and sharing sessions.  These were intended for pre-school educators to help them implement the principles of the curriculum framework.  The workshops and sharing sessions guide teachers in pedagogical skills such as designing their education programme and profiling their pupils’ progress.

d) Encouraging kindergarten leaders to conduct self-appraisal.  This will encourage kindergartens to work towards continual self-improvement. MOE assisted principals to do this by distributing a benchmarking tool called Standards for Kindergartens, and by conducting workshops and sharing sessions on self-appraisal. MOE also published a Kindergarten Manual to advise service providers and practitioners so as to give them a better understanding of the regulatory requirements and guidelines governing the operation of kindergartens. 

2.  MOE conducts regular reviews of teaching and learning in pre-schools in Singapore. These reviews inform MOE of the steps it can take to further help kindergartens improve the quality of teaching and learning they provide.

3.  One of the areas MOE is looking into is enhancing the professional quality of the sector, for example, in uplifting teachers’ proficiency in the English Language. More details of this initiative will be announced later.

CPR curriculum

Name and Constituency of  Member of Parliament

Dr Fatimah Abdul Lateef, MP for Marine Parade GRC

Question

To ask the Minister for Education if there are plans to incorporate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training into the school curriculum especially from secondary school level onwards as many cardiac arrests happen in the community and not in hospitals and healthcare institutions.

Response

1. The effective execution of CPR requires both technical skills and mental readiness. An individual trained in CPR further needs experience and maturity to assess whether a crisis situation needs one to effect an appropriate intervention through CPR or not.

2. In secondary schools, First Aid is a core component in all Uniformed Group (UG) training programmes. The First Aid course is at the basic level which includes teaching students to render first aid treatment for cuts and bruises, and the dressing of wounds.  However, the First Aid Course does not include CPR.  CPR requires additional training and certification.  Only Uniformed Groups like Red Cross, SJAB and National Civil Defence Cadet Corps that have trained instructors include CPR as a compulsory training component as part of an extended First Aid package.

3. CPR requires judgement and technical expertise to be appropriately and effectively executed in a given crisis situation.   The training of CPR requires skilled instructors who need to be re-certified every three years.  Likewise, trainees need to be re-certified regularly.

4. It would therefore be best left to professional bodies with qualified trainers to promote CPR within the community rather than to incorporate CPR into the school curriculum.