SINGAPORE - As a young early childhood educator 36 years ago, Ms A. Susila, 58, thought that special needs comprised only physical disabilities such as being blind and deaf.
After attending several courses over time, she realised there was a wider spectrum of conditions that could be considered special needs.
“These children need support, and my heart went out to them. Compared with 25 years ago, the number of children being diagnosed with special needs now has clearly increased. We need more people to journey with them,” said Ms Susila, the lead pre-school educator at Presbyterian Preschool Services.
She is also a newly appointed Pastel – pedagogists and specialists in teaching and learning – in the area of inclusive practice.
“Theoretically, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to teach special needs children... I want to equip teachers with the skills they need to feel empowered and competent,” she said.
She is one of 87 teaching and learning specialists who were appointed Pastels at the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) fellows appointment ceremony on April 23 at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront.
These educators are part of the Early Childhood Learning Communities programme – a platform for senior educators to enhance their pedagogical knowledge in specific domains through peer sharing and learning at the sector level.
Speaking at the event on April 23, Minister of State for Social and Family Development Sun Xueling said the programme will include two new domains in 2024: inclusive practice and mother tongue languages, with the aim of deepening educators’ skills in supporting children’s diverse needs.
The other four domains are early years competencies, outdoor learning, language and literacy, and social and emotional development.
Since 2021, the inaugural batch of 56 teaching and learning specialists have led 26 sessions engaging 260 early childhood educators as they shared their experiences and expertise across the first four domains.
More than half of the 87 specialists appointed in 2024 have at least a decade of experience in early childhood education.
They come from a mix of organisation types – anchor and partner operators, Ministry of Education kindergartens, private pre-schools and social service agencies.
A total of 29 ECDA fellows were appointed at the ceremony as well. Of this group, nine were newly appointed, including Ms Stacey Toh, cluster manager at Babilou Family Singapore, and Ms Justine Ho, lead learning support educator at NTUC First Campus. The rest were reappointed.
ECDA fellows, who guide the implementation of teaching and learning strategies in pre-schools, are selected based on their expertise, leadership and professionalism in the field of early childhood education.
Ms Sun said the ECDA fellows will in 2024 start mentoring early childhood leaders who are in the Professional Development Programme for Leaders. Leaders from two new tracks will be welcomed into the programme as well.
She said the newly minted ECDA fellows from the early intervention and learning support tracks can boost efforts to integrate early intervention and early childhood education.
Over the past nine years, the ECDA fellows have led 19 inquiry-based projects, and engaged more than 3,000 early childhood leaders through more than 200 learning workshops and sharing sessions.
In her speech, Ms Sun said: “The early childhood profession is a dynamic one with good professional and career development opportunities. Our early childhood leaders will need to step up to play a transformational role to nurture educators.
“Over the years, we have laid strong foundations to enhance the attractiveness of early childhood careers, such as reviewing educators’ salaries and enhancing their well-being.”
Between 2015 and 2023, ECDA invested more than $96 million in training early childhood educators as part of efforts to help them progress in their careers and raise standards in the sector.
The agency rolled out the Continuing Professional Development road map in 2023 to support teachers’ career progression.
Early childhood educators in government-supported pre-schools saw an increase of between 10 per cent and 30 per cent in their salaries from 2022 to 2024.
In the last 10 years, ECDA also introduced initiatives such as the ECDA Scholarships and Training Awards to attract more people to the sector. There are about 25,000 pre-school educators in Singapore, but the sector will still need to attract over 1,500 more by 2025.
