More mother tongue language learning at two new pre-schools

MOE to study impact of kids spending extra time on mother tongue language activities

- Chin Soo Fang

A small-scale pilot will be launched at two new pre-schools by the Ministry of Education (MOE) to study the impact on young children when they have more exposure to mother tongue language (MTL) activities.

From 2025, Kindergarten 1 children attending the upcoming MOE Kindergarten @ Hougang and MOE Kindergarten @ Elias Park will have an extra 30 minutes of Chinese, Malay or Tamil learning each day.

Currently, MOE kindergarten children spend one hour on MTL activities daily. With the pilot, the daily MTL curriculum duration at the two centres will go up to 1½ hours. The extra 30 minutes will increase the overall schooling hours, rather than be implemented at the expense of other subjects, MOE said.

“The pilot aims to build a strong MTL foundation for our children from a young age, and nurture their interest to learn MTL,” said a spokesperson for MOE in response to queries from The Straits Times.

The ministry will evaluate the impact of the pilot to see if it should be expanded to more MOE kindergartens.

Ms Ariel Ng, 41, whose four-year-old son Aden Lim is in MOE Kindergarten @ Mayflower, said having more MTL exposure would be beneficial.

“One hour of MTL (a day) is definitely not enough, and I was thinking of sending him to a Chinese enrichment class,” said the quality specialist, who speaks a mix of English and Mandarin to her son at home.

Some other pre-schools also conduct about one hour of MTL lessons daily for their students. Their operators say there is no intention at the moment to increase the curriculum.

At PAP Community Foundation’s (PCF) 354 Sparkletots centres, children in K1 and K2 (aged five to six) get an hour of formal MTL lessons daily, while those in N1 and N2 (aged three to four) have 20 to 30 minutes.