Private Education Bill

Sir, I stand in support of the Private Education Bill.

The strategy to turn Singapore into "a world-class education hub or a global school house" is a brilliant one that leverages on our country's stellar reputation in public education. The strategy not only serves an economic agenda to bring in additional revenue, if executed well, it will helpattract foreigners who, hopefully, will remain in Singapore as employees and citizens and will also draw more world-class R&D programmes here. It will even help to meet demands by local students who have not been able to attend Singapore's public universities and cannot afford to study abroad.

However, the execution of this brilliant strategy had left much to be desired. Singapore's ambitious goal to build a world-class education hub has been dealt many blows – the latest being the peddling of fake degrees by and closure of private school, Brookes Business School, leaving more than 400 local and foreign students in the lurch. Over the years, rising complaints of these private schools ranged from poor quality programmes, forged signatures on student pass applications, bogus attendances and illegal employment of student-pass holders and, beyond the school walls, cheating of students by some unscrupulous hostel or HDB flat owners.

In my view, this less than ideal state of affairs is due to several root causes. First, under-estimating the critical success factors required to be a world-class player in a competitive global marketplace. A time bomb was created when MTI's EDB and STB diligently pronounced the aspiration of the global school house and started promoting Singapore as an education destination. This proceeded without enough consideration of the quality of slate of offerings and such is the flaw of key performance indicators (KPIs) that stress quantity and not quality. The second root cause relates to the lack of buy-in from the content expert player, the Ministry of Education, which had traditionally perceived itself as a provider of non-profit mainstream education with little to do with enterprise and other non-mainstream education. For many years, MOE has kept a distance from the private schools other than registering them as long as basic statutory requirements, such as building and fire safety requirements, are met. And, third, the Ministry's light touch strategy has led to an over-reliance on self-regulation in a sector characterised by more than a thousand PEIs of varying degrees of technical competence and financial strengths.

Sir, having MOE finally come on board does not guarantee the success of Singapore's global school house business plan since the core strength of civil servants does not usually lie in enterprise. However, the entry of MOE due to its reputation as an excellent public education provider is much needed to restore the confidence and trust in private education. It is better late than never.

I have four specific inputs to offer regarding the proposed Bill and the setting up of a Council for Private Education to register, regulate, audit and discipline errant providers.

The first concerns the Council’s power to direct errant Private Education Institutions (PEIs) to refund course fees and offer alternative placements.

Sir, currently, by the time a court orders an errant PEI to refund or place its students with an alternate institution, the guilty party may already not be in a financial position to do so. Student victims may also not be in a state to pay the new fees, especially if they had already lost the fees paid in the preceding year. One of my residents, who has been affected by the Brookes Business School saga, had taken up a bank loan to pay for his education. With no money now to pay for a similar course at another private school and no money to pay for legal costs to take action against Brookes, he has asked for my help to appeal for a deferment of the repayment of his private loan. It was taken up with the private bank and the appeal for deferment was successfully approved.

Clause 60 of the Bill aims to provide teeth for the Council to direct errant providers to refund course fees paid by students and offer alternate placements at another PEI. Elsewhere, at the MOE website, it is written that the EduTrust scheme will also provide for the protection of student money.

In reality, PEIs cannot possibly run their operations by putting up hefty dollar deposits into escrow accounts or pay hefty student insurance premiums. I seek clarification from the Ministry to ensure that there is indeed protection for victims in scams that lead to the entire closure of a private school or bankruptcy of the owners.

Sir, in the case study of Brookes Business School where the owners received some $8 million in fees, can the Senior Minister of State advise what would be a reasonable sum that will balance the two seemingly opposing aims of consumer protection and good business sense?

In addition, I would like to request the Senior Minister of State to ensure that service standards are also set up especially on response times to give alerts on errant providers, as it is a known fact that the Government was alerted as early as 2007 to the case of Brookes Business School but action was delayed.

My second input relates to quality assurance. In this respect, I beg to differ from my colleague, Mr Calvin Cheng, who deems that PEI registrations are sufficient to guarantee quality.

Sir, quality must remain a key unique differentiator of Singapore’s private education sector if we wish to rise above the crowd in an industry where countries with similar aspirations can easily adopt a copycat strategy. The weakness of this Bill lies in what appears to be a wasted opportunity to inject quality into the DNA of the private education sector by making it compulsory for all PEIs to join a reasonably-tiered certification scheme. Part IV clause 49 states that the Council may establish one or more voluntary accreditation or certification schemes. I understand that a voluntary six-category EduTrust certification scheme will be launched by the Council to incentivise PEIs to improve their quality.

Instead of making it voluntary, the Council should make membership in the Scheme compulsory and ensure all providers meet a set of minimum basic standards within 18 months of registration. To nurture industry players, a tiered roadmap to move from minimum basic to a Gold Standard should be developed and training and consulting solutions be made available to the players. Compulsory membership in a quality certification scheme with a development roadmap will not only inject quality into the sector but, over time, will also nurture high-potential smaller players to play leading roles in the industry.

Thirdly, Sir, it is crucial for the Council to reinforce consumer education and awareness and provide transparency to both prospective students and employers in the industry. The current MOE website listing of only company names and contacts of private schools is grossly insufficient for consumers to make any informed choices.

The independent US Office of Non-Public Education, which is part of the US Department of Education, for instance, publishes regular reports in several areas of state regulation of private schools. The topics include the status of private schools on registration, accreditation, licensing, teacher certifications, professional development, and so forth.

In other countries, Education Departments have gone to the extent of ‘naming and shaming’ repeat offenders in order to deter unscrupulous operators.

MOE, through its home page on private schools, has cautioned students to be selective and find out more about programmes and institutions before making any commitment but has offered no consolidated information on these bodies. It is welcome news that the new Council will adopt the best practices of other progressive countries and publish regular reports on key quality and financial benchmarks. These can help students, parents and employers to access key information of the registered PEIs before they decide to enroll or to employ. I commend and applaud the Ministry for addressing this need for consumer education and even setting up a student services centre for this.

Finally , Sir, I would also like to highlight to the Ministry on the coverage of PEIs supporting students with disabilities or special needs. As stated in the First Schedule, the proposed Bill covers only students with physical or intellectual disabilities. It omits those afflicted by the three highest developmental disabilities, such as ADHD, autism and dyslexia. Many of these students do not suffer from a physical or intellectual impairment and are not protected currently by the proposed Bill. I seek the Senior Minister of State's help to correct this particular clause to reflect the profile of this segment of the student body.

In conclusion, Sir, the clean-up and consolidation of the private education industry is long overdue. Many students, both local and international, have been hurt in the last few years due to the lack of execution excellence of a brilliant strategy. The proposed Bill is critical not only to protect the current and future students; it serves to ensure that Singapore’s and MOE’s positive brand equity is not further dented and, if implemented well, this strategy and development may well be an important component to make Singapore’s dream of becoming a world-class education hub come true.

Sir, I support this Bill.