By Jane Ng

THE Education Ministry (MOE) is looking for 152 children who should be in their Primary 1 classes by now, but instead have yet to register for school.

The families of the pupils cannot be contacted, a ministry spokesman said, explaining that there is a variety of reasons for this: They might have changed their addresses, are overseas or are otherwise unreachable.

The 'missing' pupils are among 1,483 children whose parents did not register them for Primary 1 last year, as required under the Compulsory Education Act (CE) enacted six years ago.

The 152 children who have yet to start Primary 1 this year do not include the 57 home-schoolers and 353 madrasah students who applied to be exempted from the Compulsory Education Act, which makes it a must for children born after Jan 1, 1996 to receive at least six years of education.

Parents who fail to register their children can be fined up to $5,000 per case or jailed for up to a year, or both. So far, no parent has been charged in court for not sending their child to school.

The number of children not registered for Primary 1 this year is 'comparable' to that from the year before, the MOE spokesman said.

Asked why the numbers had not fallen appreciably despite the law being in place for six years now, Ms Denise Phua, a Member of Parliament for Jalan Besar GRC and a member of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Education, responded by calling for the law to be 'strictly enforced'.

'If there are children who should be in school and are not, the CE law and spirit must be strictly enforced. Errant families must be taken to task and social service support must be rendered where needed,' she said.

'Although the missing children amount to less than 1 per cent, every life matters, and no one should be left behind due to a lack of education.

'MOE should rigorously track down each case through government and grassroots organisations till we are convinced that each is accounted for.'

The Singapore Children's Society, which has been appointed by the ministry to counsel families whose children are not registered for school, said it has seen a slight decline in such cases.

Ms Sue Cheng, director of the society's research and outreach centre, attributes this to more parents being aware that it is an offence not to do so.

MOE said there was just one case referred to the society last year, compared to a high of 14 in 2004.

But Ms Cheng is seeing a new problem: Children who are registered for school but do not attend class regularly.

Between 2003 and last year, the ministry referred 37 cases of non-registration and 106 cases of irregular attendance to the society, she said.

In some cases, she added, the society's best efforts to help were fruitless.

She cited as an example a Primary 6 boy whose class attendance had been poor for a few years despite the school's efforts. His parents were separated and the boy lived with his mother, brother and grandmother.

His mother did not see the importance of education - her older son was a school dropout who was doing fine without an education, and she felt there was no need for the younger boy to hit the books.

Said Ms Cheng: 'She was not interested in working with our case worker and was passive throughout. The boy had no interest in school, and got abusive with our case worker.'

After months of trying, the society referred the case to the ministry for further action.

Anyone who knows of children who should be but are not attending primary school may e-mail MOE's Compulsory Education Unit at moe_ce@moe.edu.sg

This article was first published in The Straits Times.