Everything You Need to Know About Finding a Childcare Centre in Singapore

1. Understand Your Needs

Location: Decide if you prefer a center near home or your workplace.

Budget: Consider how much you're willing to spend monthly. Subsidies from the government may help reduce costs.

2. Types of Child Care

Infant Care (2-18 months): Focuses on infants'needs.

Childcare (18 months-6 years): Offers programs for early childhood development,including social, cognitive, and motor skills.

It should be noted that there are kindergartens which offer half day programs.If you are looking for full day programme, kindergartens are not suitable for you.

3. What is ECDA?

The Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) is a Singapore government agency that oversees and regulates the early childhood sector. It is a statutory board under the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF).

4. What are AOP and POP?

The Anchor Operator(AOP) scheme provides funding and support to larger childcare and preschool operators in exchange for offering affordable, accessible, and quality programs.

Operators must adhere to fee caps, quality standards, and operational guidelines set by ECDA.

Examples of anchor operators include My First Skool (NTUC First Campus), PAP Community Foundation (PCF Sparkletots) and Skool4Kidz.

The Partner Operator(POP) scheme supports medium-sized childcare operators with funding, enabling them to provide affordable services while maintaining quality. POP targets smaller operators than the AOP scheme but holds similar goals.

Example of partner operators include Star Learners, Little Footprints Preschool and Small Wonder Preschool.

5. Subsidy and grant

Basic Subsidy For Child Care

Service Type	Monthly subsidy for working mother or single fathers	Subsidy for Non-working mother/single father
Full-day child care	$300	$150

Table: Child Care Subsidy

Additional Subsidy For Child Care

It should be noted that there is minimum co-payment for each income group.

If the household monthly income is less than $12,000 or gross monthly per capita income is less than $3,000 and mothers/single fathers are working, there is an additional subsidy given by the government. Please refer to the table below for details.

Please refer to child care and infant care subsidy for details of additional child care subsidy.

Start-Up Grant (SUG)

This grant is available for children from families with a gross monthly income of $3,500 or less, or a per capita income of $875 or less.

The SUG is a one-time grant to cover the initial costs of enrolling your child in an affordable infant or childcare centre. It is capped at $1,000 per child (inclusive of GST, if applicable) and covers the registration fee, deposit, school uniform, insurance and mattress.

6. Teacher to student ratio

As stipulated by ECDA, the minimum qualified staff-child ratios during programme hours are as follows:

Class level (Age of Children)	Staff to Children Ratio	Staff to Children Ratio (with an additional Assistant Educarer/Teacher)
Infant (18 months and below)	1:5	Not Applicable
Playgroup (Above 18 – to below 3 years old)	1:8	1 + 1 : 12
Pre-Nursery (Children who turn 3 years old during the year enrolled)	1:12	1 + 1 : 18
Nursery (Children who turn 4 years old during the year enrolled)	1:15	1 + 1 : 20
Kindergarten 1 (Children who turn 5 years old during the year enrolled)	1:20	1 + 1 : 25
Kindergarten 2 (Children who turn 6 years old during the year enrolled)	1:25	1 + 1 : 30

Table: Stipulated Staff Child Ratio

7. When and where to start search?

You should begin searching for a childcare or infant care centre 6 to 12 months before your intended enrolment date.

You can visit Child Care in Singapore to find all child care centres near home or workplace.

For infant care centre, you can visit Infant Care in Singapore.

8. Teaching method at child care centre

In Singapore, most of the preschools adopts one of the following teaching methods:

Play-based learning
Theme-based approach
Montessori method
Reggio Emilia approach
Inquiry-Based Learning
Holistic approach

9. What is SPARK Accreditation?

SPARK Accreditation stands for the Singapore Preschool Accreditation Framework,an initiative by the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) to assess and improve the quality of preschool education and care in Singapore. It is a voluntary quality assurance program aimed at raising the standards of preschools and childcare centers.

It is noted that many private child care centres do not participate in this acceditation.

10. Resources

You can visit Facebook group Childcare in Singapore or Whatsapp group Child Care Chat Group to ask reviews of child care centre.