In Singapore, early childhood care and education has evolved according to the nation’s needs since its independence in 1965. From a welfare scheme to custodial care, early childhood care and education is now recognised as a critical part of children’s learning and development. Over the years, the government has progressively implemented policies to raise the quality of early childhood care and education and while increased efforts have been effective, there is still a gap between policy and practice. This article reviews the policies and frameworks throughout the history of early childhood care and education, with a focus on infant toddler care and examines some of the alignment and gaps. It identifies two key areas for improvement – staff to child ratio and teacher quality for quality infant toddler care. In the current staff to child ratio, an ‘educarer’ oversees 5 children between 2 and 18 months. This indicates that the educarer needs to be well trained for this role to cater to a wide range of learning and developmental needs. However, the quality of teacher training has been disparate and was only harmonised in 2017. This suggests that the quality of educarers is still uneven in the sector. In terms of qualifications, educarers only need to fulfil the minimum level of teacher certification, which means that the youngest children in their most formative years are being taught and cared for by the least qualified educators ( Bull and Bautista, 2018 ). Cognisant of these issues, this article proposes recommendations to address issues of manpower allocation and teacher quality.

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This chapter explores the education of multicultural citizens in Singapore by drawing upon the teachings from Confucianism, which is a major cultural heritage of Singaporeans. A key challenge for multicultural citizenship is a superficial understanding of and limited interaction between cultural groups in a political unit. Based on two key passages from the Confucian classic Analects as expounded by Ivanhoe, this chapter suggests a Confucian notion of multicultural citizenship. This conception comprises two essential components: first, a multicultural citizen is one who subscribes to and evinces an openness to other cultures. Such a person is guided by shu (empathy) which is displayed through cross-cultural humility, interest and engagement. Second, a multicultural citizen demonstrates and promotes a shared universal family which is rooted in ren (humanity). To illustrate the application of the Confucian model to the education of multicultural citizenship in Southeast Asia, examples that foster inter-religious harmony are provided.

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