By Kor Kian Beng & Zakir Hussain

NESTLED in a tranquil spot off downtown Newton Road, 15 six-year-olds are huddled in an air-conditioned room listening to their teacher explain the ecological system.

They are among 225 pre-schoolers aged two to six at EtonHouse's Newton branch, one of the 10 that the upmarket pre-school operator runs in Singapore.

Housed in a two-storey building sitting on a 2,710 sq m area, the branch boasts 16 classrooms, a music room, a kitchen that provides local and international food and a grass lawn well stocked with playground equipment.

The price tag for each child is a monthly fee of more than $1,000.

At another childcare centre in the void deck of an HDB block in Sembawang, some pre-schoolers are also attending kindergarten classes.

They are among some 100 pupils at the My First Skool branch, one of the 55 run islandwide by First Campus Group, the childcare arm of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC).

Facilities here are more basic compared to those at EtonHouse. Classes are held in a non-air-conditioned centre. During their free time, the children troop off to a nearby public playground. But their parents pay a lower fee of about $520 monthly.

The two scenarios depict the current landscape in the pre-school education sector, one that is marked by a wide spectrum of private operators and providers.

Parents picking pre-school centres to prepare their children between the ages of three and six for formal primary education have many factors to consider such as class size, facilities, curricula and the quality of teachers.

The vastly differing standards have triggered concerns among educationists, politicians and parents that free-market forces with insufficient regulatory supervision may allow some pre-school operators to compromise on standards and charge overly high fees.

It has also led to questions on social equity, with some asking if children are entering formal education on an unequal footing, depending on whether their parents can afford to pay for premium pre-school education.

It is these factors that led an expert workgroup - comprising educators, parents and academics - to focus on ways to improve the pre-school sector, which caters to at least 60,000 children yearly.

The workgroup - which was commissioned by Reach, the Government's feedback unit - made five recommendations last month, following the completion of a two-year study.

Among them were two key ones that have sparked the debate: make the Ministry of Education (MOE) the lead agency over the sector, which it now supervises with the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS).

Another called for the compulsory education age to be lowered from seven years old to five years old, thus making kindergarten education compulsory.

The recommendations have become a talking point, if not a bone of contention, among educators, pre-school operators, politicians and parents. They weigh the pros and cons with Insight.