SINGAPORE - Seventeen new sites have been allocated to the five pre-school anchor operators, the Early Childhood Development Agency said on Friday.

These centres, expected to open in the third quarter of 2014, will provide 1,700 more pre-school places for children.

NTUC's My First Skool and PAP Community Foundation were allocated four sites each, while newly appointed anchor operators Metropolitan YMCA's MY World Preschool, Kinderland Consortium's Skool4Kidz and EtonHouse International's E-Bridge Pre-School, were allocated three sites each.

For more information on the locations, parents can call the operators: My First Skool at 6509-7887, PAP Community Foundation at 6244-4780, MY World Preschool at 6839-8348, Skool4Kidz at 6342-5600, E-Bridge Pre-school at 6336-3322

The allocated sites are in areas of high demand like Punggol. The location of the first batch of sites also took into account proximity to operators' existing centres, so operators can reap synergies with nearby centres and start work more quickly.

MY World Preschool will also have 11 of their existing centres brought under the anchor operator scheme, where operators get government grants and rental subsidies in exchange for providing affordable and quality pre-school education.