1. Good afternoon. Today, I am really happy to be here to celebrate the 45th anniversary of NTUC First Campus.
2. When I agreed to join you at this celebration, many thoughts went through my mind. Many of you will know that I was once with MSF, taking care of the early childhood sector together with MOE. And today, MSF is still taking care of this sector together with MOE, in a joint partnership.
3. I want to congratulate NTUC First Campus for being a pioneer for the past 45 years. Today, you might take it as a given that we have these nice facilities, but it was not so long ago that a typical childcare or early years centre would be somewhere in the void deck, taking care of a small number of students – anywhere from ten to twenty students, to perhaps fifty to a hundred for the larger centres. I remember that when I was in MSF, the largest such centre was in Toa Payoh, with an enrolment of a few hundred.
4. One of the things that we had always asked and challenged ourselves was: Could we have larger centres? Not just for economies of scale, but more importantly for us to test out different pedagogies and ways of organising both the care and the educational components for our children.
5. At that point in time, I will say that we were in uncharted territories. There were not many examples that we could learn from, and there were certainly not many great examples in Singapore at that point in time. But just like what NTUC First Campus has done these 45 years, when we threw this challenge to the sector, they were never afraid, never daunted by the challenge. Instead, we asked ourselves, how could we turn this challenge we had ten to fifteen years ago into an opportunity for us to reimagine our early childhood education and care system.
6. Over this last twenty years, we have become much more aware of the importance of the early years. In fact, today, all of us acknowledge that whatever learning gap we see at the primary school level would perhaps have been the result of a lack of intervention in the early years.
7. For us, as a country who wants to do justice to and realise the full potential of every child, we have to ask: How can we do better for our children in their early years, even before they enter formal schooling in primary school? Because once the gap opens up in the early years, the amount of work that we need to do to remediate gaps is tremendous. So why not, for better economies of scale and better learning and social-emotional development outcomes for children, that we invest much more in the early years to establish a foundation for our children.
8. I visited a primary school this morning, and we all agree – without a strong social-emotional foundation, without an ability to regulate their emotions at an early age, we do not have the foundations to build upon when they enter schools and also when they go on to acquire the good habits of lifelong learning.
9. For all these good reasons, we have always wanted to test and challenge ourselves to pioneer new solutions. That is why I am proud that today, we have here amongst us, and also behind the scenes, a group of dedicated people who have the best interests of our children at heart and who are never afraid to pioneer new concepts.
10. This is one of our largest centres in Singapore, with six hundred to six hundred and fifty in total capacity, which is almost as big as some primary schools. This centre allows us to test new pedagogical concepts, new ways of taking care of children and also new ways to outreach to families, which are important in the development of our children.
11. Therefore, I am proud to see all these efforts. All the little things that you have shown me shows the amount of thought that you have put in to even the smallest detail. We often look at curriculum, books, and teaching materials for our children, which are important. But equally important are the environment, food and kind of play area for our children. All these little things inspire me whenever I visit NTUC First Campus and our other early childhood education centres, because it shows us not only the things that we see on the surface, but the quality of people that we have behind the scenes to achieve this. Without all your efforts, we wouldn't be where we are today. Without all your efforts, Singapore's education sector, especially the early years education sector, will not be what it is and what we want it to be in the time to come.
12. Having said that, let this be a milestone of our journey to develop a better early years school system for our children. Let this not be the endpoint of the design of the centre, pedagogy or training of our teachers, as all that must continue to progress. I am sure we can do even much better than what we have achieved over the last fifteen years with our collective efforts. Indeed, if we look forward, there are many things that we need to do and rethink about how we are doing.
13. The world is changing very quickly. The type of skill sets that our children need to acquire, both in school and beyond school, is changing rapidly.
14. I have a simple challenge for my MOE colleagues, as we say that our benchmark of success is not how well we do for our children in their first fifteen years, but really how well our children can take care of themselves and do well for their next fifty years beyond the school system.
15. If we want to realise this vision of them being successful beyond the first fifteen years into the next fifty years beyond the school system, then it must start in their early childhood years. This means that we must establish a foundation for them, and these are the following things which I think are critical to the foundation for our early learners and future Singaporeans.
16. First, we must build a strong social-emotional foundation for them. And that requires us not just to understand the children, but also the background which they come from and work with their parents and families..
17. Second, beyond literacy and numeracy, what is perhaps even more important is for us to ignite a spirit of inquiry and sense of curiosity within them through and beyond their school years. It is not just about what they must do to pass their examinations, but they want to do for themselves, over and beyond the examinations, to keep learning for life. Lifelong learning starts from preschool, whereby they develop a sense of inquiry to want to learn for life.
18. The third thing that I hope that we can help our children to establish a foundation in early years, is an ability to deal with uncertainty. This is something that is close to my heart because in Singapore, because we are so well resourced, we tend to take care of our children very well. That in itself is not a problem. But at the same time, you must remember to give children the chance to explore, the chance to build up their self confidence that they can handle unexpected things, because this will be the kind of life, this will be the kind of uncertainties that they have to deal with. And that to me, again, starts in the early years. While we try to provide more and better for our children, we must not take away that spirit of adventure, the sense that they can overcome challenges, from them. It is not just about them achieving and surpassing the standards that we set for them, it is more important for them to have that innate sense that there will be uncertainties, there will be unknowns, and there is serendipity in trying to figure out the unknown and learn from challenges.
19. I hope that today is truly a milestone, not just for First Campus, but also the early childhood education system, to scale a higher peak for our early years system. And if we can do that well, I'm confident that in time to come, our children will be even better than us.
20. And as I've always shared with many parents, our aim is not for our children to be as good as us. Our aim is for our children to be even better than us in time to come. Just as we stand on the shoulders of the last generation to stand taller and see further, we hope that we too, will lend on the shoulders to the next generation to stand taller and see further.
21. Thank you very much and congratulations to First Campus for this wonderful project, this wonderful journey, and I look forward to seeing even more inspiring work from all of you in time to come.
22. Thank you.