Choosing a pre-school shouldn't be this difficult

The early childhood sector is a maze. Selecting a place for your kids requires study, knowing the child, and a bit of luck.

- Tham Yuen-C

For most families, embarking on the journey into formal education often commences with the selection of a pre-school, a decision dripping with significance.

I experienced this first-hand in 2020, when I started the search for a pre-school in the hopes of getting my child out of the house after months of the Covid-19 lockdown.

Like many other parents, I began this important task with zero knowledge or experience and found myself thrust into a mission of epic proportions.

A DIVERSE LANDSCAPE

While I like the idea of having a say in how my child would be educated, navigating this early-education morass was mind-boggling. Selecting the perfect school from a plethora of options can seem like an impossible task.

In Singapore, pre-schools typically refer to a mixture of schools in the early childhood sector, for children from 18 months old, and kindergarten, for those from three to six years old.

Some of these schools also offer infant care for babies.

I did not know at that time, but there are more than 1,900 pre-schools in Singapore run by over 500 different operators in a diverse industry.

These operators run the gamut from social enterprises, charities and large commercial providers, to smaller players, all offering the promise of an enriching pre-school experience.

About half of them are "anchor operators" and "partner operators", which receive subsidies from the Government in exchange for capping their fees, to ensure affordable options for parents.

There are also some 50 Ministry of Education kindergartens run by the Government, which are co-located and affiliated with primary schools, and give your kid priority for Primary 1 admission.

If this is not confusing enough, different operators, whether fully commercial or government-supported, also offer contrasting facilities, extra-curricular programmes and pedagogies.