50% drop in pre-schools offering care after 7pm since 2021; may signal lower demand: MSF

SINGAPORE – The number of pre-schools offering care after 7pm has dropped from 40 in 2021 to 20 today, said Minister of State for Social and Family Development Goh Pei Ming on Feb 26.

He added that the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) recognises the challenges parents face in balancing caregiving and work commitments, and said there are alternative options for parents who require support outside of the standard pre-school operating hours.

Mr Goh was replying to a question in Parliament from Workers’ Party MP Gerald Giam (Aljunied GRC).

Pre-schools providing full-day services are required to operate from 7am to 7pm on weekdays, but have the flexibility to extend their services beyond that timeframe.

Alternative options for parents include paid and community-based services, such as babysitting services.

Mr Goh said the Government has worked closely with the tripartite partners to encourage employers to provide a family-friendly work environment, including launching the Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests in 2024.

The guidelines set out the process for employees to formally request flexible work arrangements and for employers to consider them, with the aim to better support working parents in their caregiving needs.

Mr Giam said many families face logistical challenges when fetching their child, and suggested that MSF require one pre-school per HDB estate to offer care until 7.30pm.

“For a worker, finishing work at 6pm in the Central Business District and reaching a heartland pre-school by 7pm is often a logistical impossibility, unless they take taxis every day,” he said.

He suggested that ancillary care assistants can work during those extra hours at pre-schools to avoid increasing the workload of teachers.

Mr Giam also asked whether the Early Childhood Development Agency has conducted a survey to gauge the actual interest in extended hours.

“We cannot assume that demand is low because parents may have simply resigned themselves to the current reality and are making career sacrifices in order to cope,” he said.

In reply, Mr Goh said extending operating hours is a business decision that has been left to pre-school operators, and they are free to charge parents for extra hours if they wish to account for extra staffing needs and resources.

“However, we have not seen that, and the data over the last five years bears itself that the number of pre-school operators offering that has actually come down, which may suggest that there may not be a demand for that,” he added.

The decrease can be due to a variety of factors beyond lower parental demand, such as flexible work arrangements from employers and manpower constraints from pre-schools.

Parents may also recognise that it is important to spend enough time with their children, and to not leave them in the pre-school for too long a period, Mr Goh said.

The Singapore Longitudinal Early Development Study published in 2024 found that attending pre-school beyond 40 hours weekly is associated with lower literacy and numeracy scores.

Parents see that more family time is useful, he said, and added that the Government strongly encourages parents to spend enough quality time with their children.