Looking for an affordable childcare centre? Luckily for you, the childcare fees in Singapore are more reasonable than ever.

This is thanks to two initiatives from the Early Childhood Development Agency or ECDA. Known as the Anchor Operator and Partner Operator schemes, they aim to make childcare more affordable to Singaporeans through specially appointed centres.

If you’re wondering how that can achieve the aim of more affordable childcare, it’s through a subsidy. The government essentially provides financial support to appointed centres in exchange for the centres capping fees while continuing to improve service quality.

With this, parents in Singapore can essentially choose from more quality options than ever, especially when you consider that private preschools remain an option as well.

How do the fees compare across the three?

Anchor Operator preschools (AOP) and Partner Operator preschools (POP) will obviously have lower fees than private schools. This is due to the AOP and POP schemes mandating caps on what they charge parents.

The schemes’ mandated caps vary by period, but for the current one, chosen operators have to abide by these limits:

Note that the fee caps above are specifically for Singaporean citizens and are exclusive of GST. Regardless, they show you the dramatic difference in pricing between AOPs/POPs and private preschools, which can and often do cost far more.

Private preschools vary greatly in their fees. International ones typically cost the most and ones with bigger facilities also tend to charge more. Due to the sheer range of players on the market, it can be hard to come up with a fixed price to represent all of them.

That being said, most of the well-known ones start around the $1,500 mark per month for their child care fees. Just a few examples of preschools that fall into this price bracket are Charis Montessori, Greentree Montessori, and The Little Skool-House.

If you compare that to the full-day childcare fees per month for AOPs and POPs, you see the significant price difference: AOPs can charge only $680 whereas POPs can only charge $720.

Do higher fees mean better preschools in Singapore?

It’s worth noting that the higher prices of private preschools don’t always reflect a concomitant increase in quality compared to the AOP and POP options.

AOPs and POPs are selected carefully by the government to ensure that affordability doesn’t come at the expense of service quality. Added to that, the ECDA even mandates continued quality investment for these partners.

For AOPs, for example, it provides these requirements if they want to continue receiving funding:

1. Invest in improving quality of early childhood care and education.
2. Support continuing professional development and career progression opportunities for EC professionals.

The same goes for POPs, where its mandate phrases it this way:

1. Invest in improving quality through the Singapore Pre-school Accreditation Framework(SPARK), and ​in strengthening organisational capabilities.
2. Support continuing professional development opportunities for centre leaders and preschool educators.

So, choosing the more affordable POPs or AOPs shouldn’t mean you’re giving up quality child care for your little one. Paying two times what you pay at a POP doesn’t guarantee that you’re getting twice the child care, in other words!

Simply choose the best preschool you can find within your means to get the most value for your money. With options like POPs and AOPs, no Singaporean should find great child care out of reach any longer.