By Huang Huifen

Sending parents to jail, if they have not enrolled their children for Primary 1, is not what the Ministry of Education (MOE) wants to do right off the bat.

Instead, it will continue working with voluntary organisations to reach out to these families and encourage them to put their children in school, said Mr Masagos Zulkifli.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary in MOE and the Ministry of Home Affairs was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Mendaki education workshop held at Xishan Primary School yesterday.

Last week, it was reported that 1,483 children had not registered by the deadline last year for Primary 1 this year.

An MOE spokesman told The Sunday Times that the parents of all but 152 children subsequently enrolled their children after reminders.

Parents who fail to do so can be fined up to $5,000 for each case or be jailed for up to a year, or both. So far, no parent has been charged.

Mr Masagos cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

'We do not know, we cannot generalise what the problems are. Because financially, there is a lot of support for the parents to take their children to school,' he said.

'It could be a very complicated matter; it could be family or caregiver issues and so forth, and I think if parents are willing to work with the ministry officials, we are very certain that it can be overcome.'

He noted that the Compulsory Education Act has worked since 99 per cent of parents already send their children to school.

Mr Masagos also gave the assurance that security in schools in general is very satisfactory, following reports that a foreign worker had sexually abused a seven-year-old boy in a school toilet last year.

'We are very mindful when we recruit anyone into working in the school environment. But, certainly, we cannot always catch them, and by and large, these incidents, which can be alarming, are rare and few indeed,' he said.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.