Parents of children with special needs face a complex dilemma when making educational choices for their children.
A wide range of services is available at various price points, but parents are largely left on their own to identify the optimal ones. Could ECDA provide more one-stop advisory services for parents? This will help to ease the anxiety that many parents of special needs children feel.
For children who require medium to high levels of early intervention support, such services can be prohibitively expensive. While ECDA does provide subsidised support through the EIPIC programme, EIPIC centres have wait times ranging from three to 18 months and most provide a limited number of hours of intervention a week. This requires parents to turn to additional services that can cost thousands more every month.
Can ECDA work with EIPIC providers to increase the capacity and range of services provided so that children can receive all the early intervention support they require from the same centre? A centralised provision of early intervention services will bring economies of scale, which can reduce costs for parents.
Children who require lower levels of early intervention support can attend mainstream primary schools, but may still require supplementary support services like occupational therapy. Can MOE provide an integrated special needs support programme at mainstream schools? This will enable children with special needs to thrive in such environments and reduce the costs and inconvenience borne by parents for external support services?
I delivered this speech in Parliament during the Committee of Supply debate on the budget of the Ministry of Education, on 7 Mar 2022.
