NTUC First Campus (NFC) announced today that all 167 of its pre-schools will support the latest Government announcement on fee offsets, along with other Anchor Operators (AOP). NFC will provide a partial offset of the net fees for the month of May 2020 for children not attending the pre-school due to the earlier announced “circuit breaker” measures. This is part of NFC’s efforts to provide support to families and their children through this crucial period, when centres suspend general services from Wednesday, 8 April 2020 to Monday, 4 May 2020. An estimated 19,500 children will benefit from this support.

Ensuring the well-being of families and children

A 50% fee offset off the net fees payable for May 2020 will apply to Singaporean children enrolled in NTUC First Campus’ My First Skool (MFS), The Little Skool-House (LSH) and The Caterpillar’s Cove (TCC) and are not attending pre-school during this one-month circuit breaker period [1]. 

165 NFC pre-schools will remain open to provide limited services to serve around 2500 children of parents/guardians who are working in essential services and without alternative care arrangements. Priority will be given to the children of healthcare workers, children of low-income/ daily wage workers, and children of other workers employed in essential services. 

Whilst our centres remain open to serve these families, we will continue to step up hygiene practices and precautionary measures such as daily temperature checks, increasing cleaning frequency, practicing social distancing and not organizing centre events involving large groups as well as fieldtrips/excursions. 

Kidzmatters: The one-stop portal with interactive home-based learning resources

To provide quality resources for children to continue learning at home, NFC has partnered all five anchor operators [2] to make available interactive home-based learning resources and parent guides on a one-stop portal, Kidzmatters. Parents can access it via website (https://kidzmatters.com/) or the mobile app. 

Parents and their children can enjoy the convenience of accessing specially curated, compelling home-based learning resources put together by the five Anchor Operators with ECDA’s inputs through a single portal, to reinforce their children’s learning. Besides looking forward to new content daily, parents will be able to pick up tips and techniques from accompanying parent guides on how to facilitate and optimise their children’s home-based learning experience. NFC is also progressively bringing more partners on board. 

Sharing the rationale behind these efforts, Mr Chan Tee Seng, NTUC First Campus’ CEO, said: “We understand the needs of working families who are inconvenienced by measures put in place during the “circuit breaker” period. Parents are also concerned about the learning of their children, and keeping them engaged. For parents who are unable to access our services during this period, NFC along with all five Anchor Operators will support the Government’s efforts and provide a fee offset of 50% of net fees payable in the month of May. This applies to Singaporean children who have to stay home during this period. At the same time, we are also happy to have joined hands with our AOP partners and ECDA to make home-based learning more engaging by introducing interactive content through KidzMatters. The first of these learning resources will be made available from Wednesday, 8th April 2020.This is part of our collective contributions to make a difference for our children and families during these challenging times.”

Ms Jamie Ang, the Early Childhood Development Agency’s CEO, said: “We commend NTUC First Campus’ initiatives and those of other AOPs to make available the partial offset of fees to parents in these exceptional times. We are also heartened by its initiative, together with other AOPs, to make available home-based learning resources in a user-friendly format to support children’s learning and interaction during the centre closure period, and beyond. It is an excellent example of industry collaboration during these difficult times.”

[1] Parents who pay net fees of $470.40 (incl GST) for May 2020 will now pay $235.20 ($470.40/2) after the fee offset

[2] The 5 Anchor Operators are My First Skool, E-bridge, MY World, PCF Sparkletots, Skool4kidz