Key to the Kingdom

For Trehaus CEO Elaine Kim, premium preschools can be research labs that support education equality.

-  JENNIFER CHEN

Even at the age of five, Elaine Kim's son is already a prolific creator.Having mastered graphic design programmes like Canva to produce his own gifts of art, it was not long before he created his own NFTs in school. As the child of Trehaus School's co-founder and chief executive, he naturally has access to one of the best early education programmes in Singapore. The Trehaus system is a distillation of the world's leading preschool pedagogy that includes principles from Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Stanford University's nursery school programmes and more. His mother's vision for the company from day one, however, extends beyond providing quality early education for elites.

So, even as Trehaus is set to launch a brick-and-mortar school in Jakarta in June, its first outside of Singapore, Elaine speaks about her determination to improve education equality, with Trehaus' physical schools serving as research labs to refine teaching methods and develop resources. "We have always been a mission-driven company, which is to change education for the better and raise the next generation of changemakers with the right values. This is the biggest legacy that we can leave for the future," says Elaine. She points out that preschools with the bells and whistles are expensive; the low teacher to student ratio, for one, is cost prohibitive. (At Trehaus, it's one to five.) So, how can the company help kids everywhere access quality early education?