TOUCHING MORE LIVES
Growth
NTUC First Campus (NFC) believes that every child deserves access to high-quality, affordable pre-school education and care. That is why we are committed to growing our network of pre-schools and student care centres in every neighbourhood in Singapore.
174 centres
145 centres
20 centres
9 centresMy First Skool
The number of children enrolled in My First Skool (MFS) in 2020 was 21,000, a 20% increase from 2019. This was supported by new centre openings, with some 145 MFS centres now in operation.
In 2020, MFS commenced operations of the new 690-capacity centre at Rivervale Crescent. The centre, specially designed with play areas centred on the theme of fairy tales and nursery rhymes, is gradually ramping up enrolment and operations.
The Little Skool-House
The Little Skool-House’s (LSH) 20 pre-school centres serve over 2,000 children around Singapore. Over half of the centres are in workplace locations, catering to the diverse needs of working parents around Singapore. LSH enables high proficiency in both English and Mandarin in children with its immersive bilingual curriculum.
afterschool
afterschool, NFC’s student care arm, operates nine student care centres and one KCare centre, providing families with holistic, reliable and quality student care. afterschool’s quality developmental activities are designed to complement MOE’s Primary School Curriculum objectives. In 2020, afterschool serves some 880 children, a 20% increase from 2019.
Outreach
As a social enterprise, NTUC First Campus (NFC) is committed to making a positive social impact on the community, partnering families to enable every child to have an equal footing and a good start in life. We continually develop new initiatives to reach out to families to provide a holistic system of assistance, from financial support, social support, to learning and developmental support. This ties in with our mission of making quality child development and care services accessible to every child through our Child Support Model (CSM).
Find out more about the NFC’s CSM here.
NTUC First Campus’ Child Support Services
Support for working families
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially during the circuit breaker period, many families in Singapore faced financial challenges. NFC supported the Government’s initiatives on fee offsets for children not attending pre-school due to the circuit breaker measures, providing a partial fee offset of the net fees during the circuit breaker period in 2020. This benefitted some 20,000 NFC children. NFC pre-schools continued to operate during that period, providing home-based learning for children at home, while also continuing to provide limited services to serve children whose parents work in essential services and were without alternative care arrangements.
Find out more here.
Support for low-income families
In addition, NFC also provided additional support for families who had a reduction in household income or loss of job during the COVID-19 period. NFC’s Bright Horizons Fund (BHF) initiated the $500,000 “Bright Horizons Fund Care Package for COVID-19” to provide a 100% fee offset off the net fees payable for these families for six months. This benefitted MFS children whose families had a household income of less than $4,500 per month.
Find out more here.
NTUC First Campus’ Bright Horizons Fund and My First Skool have been supporting us a lot. Sahfira has been taking extra classes in school, as part of learning support. Now, they are also helping us with the school fees. I am very grateful.
NTUC First Campus’ Digital Kampung Programme
In ensuring that our parents and children continue to be able to learn regardless of the circumstances, NFC has embraced an Omni-Channel model, which leverages both physical and digital platforms to enhance children’s learning and parent engagement. However, NFC recognises that there are low-income families with children in My First Skool (MFS) who do not have access to suitable digital devices at home and lack the knowledge to use such devices.
Hence, NFC launched the Digital Kampung programme, bridging the digital divide for more than 2,000 low-income families and their children over three years, by enhancing digital access and strengthening digital literacy. Under the programme, NFC leases Apple iPads on a short-term basis of up to three months to eligible MFS families. This aims to facilitate the children’s learning and online engagement between MFS centres and the families. The Apple iPads will be pre-installed with educational materials and applications to support their children’s learning and encourage high-quality screen time, as well as resources for parents to communicate with the preschool online.
Parents will also receive a “Digital Kampung Programme Starter Kit” which contains a useful step-by-step guide on iPad usage, recommended screen time for children and cyber-wellness tips, to strengthen their digital literacy. In addition, NFC will provide SIM cards for low-income families without WiFi access so that they can access the internet.
The programme is supported by the FairPrice Group, who donated $500,000 via its charity arm, FairPrice Foundation to NFC’s Bright Horizons Fund (BHF) and NTUC Health’s Eldercare Trust. $250,000 goes to supporting the Digital Kampung programme.
For more information, please click here.
The Digital Kampung programme is greatly beneficial, the iPad helps Queenie and myself a lot. With the iPad, both of us can participate in centre activities and learning more easily. We can see more clearly with the larger screen compared to participating on my mobile phone. I am happy to see my child trying out various learning activities with the iPad. For example, Queenie learnt about pitch in music by tapping on glasses filled with different levels of water, while watching and following an educational video by her teacher at home.
The educational apps on the iPad are good because Alesha can learn more such as spelling and counting, and this can reinforce the concepts she has learnt in school. Even when I am tied up with work, Alesha can use these to continue learning.
Tele-intervention for Children with Needs
During the circuit breaker in 2020, intervention for children with learning and development needs were suspended. The cases under NFC’s Learning Support (LS) programme were nearing the end of intervention with a few more sessions to go, while the cases in the Development Support (DS) programme were at the stage where individual sessions were ending and in-class support sessions were about to kick-off.
NFC recognised that it was important to continue to support the learning and development of the children, maintain collaboration and communications with the parents and children – especially the socio-emotional aspects – and to support the parents by providing them with teaching instructions and resources for home engagement. NFC’s Learning Support Educators (LSEds) that were providing these support continued to engage the families through various means such as video calls, text messages and phone calls.
Both the parents and children benefitted from these arrangements as there was uninterrupted learning and reinforcement of skills for the children even while they were at home. At the same time, the LSEds continued to monitor the children’s progress and teach them new concepts. The parents and LSEds collaborated closely to facilitate a suitable learning environment for the children despite the challenging circumstances. The parents were also able to observe and understand their child’s learning process first-hand. This empowered them to be equal partners in their children’s learning and development.
With the implementation of the tele-intervention sessions, the support sessions were able to be completed within the targeted time. The LSEds also learnt to be resourceful and respond effectively to cater to the community.
It was an educational and adventurous experience engaging in tele-intervention to support families. I had to be creative during the planning of the sessions and spontaneous during the execution of the sessions. The child’s mother was thankful. She noticed her child improving over the sessions. Her child enjoyed the engagement and was always looking forward to the tele-intervention sessions.
Caring for our families’ well-being
As part of NFC’s Do-Good initiative to support the needs of lower-income families during COVID-19 pandemic, NFC curated, packed and distributed care packs for NFC’s KidSTART families. NFC took the opportunity to share useful tips and strategies with parents on the importance of adopting good personal hygiene in their daily routines. The care packs contained placemats that contained illustrations and short messages on healthy daily habits. The staff that distributed the care packs were also able to reinforce good hygiene habits taught by the teachers and encouraged parents to extend this to the home environment.
The care packs contained items such as shampoos, soaps, wet tissues, antiseptic cleaners, and more. The care packs distributed in 2020 benefitted some 1580 children in My First Skool pre-schools.
NFC also partnered Food from the Heart (FFTH), a non-profit organisation that feeds those in need through its food distribution programme. With some families facing financial challenges and struggling to meet their daily needs such as meals, NFC distributed food items to these families. Some of the food items include rice, noodles, oatmeal, and more.
To further help families with information on various support assistance, NFC also developed a one-stop e-resource for low-income families, with a curated list of available government and community assistance related to COVID-19. This was part of NFC’s efforts to provide additional support for families in need. The curated list can be found here.
