Making Every Preschool Inclusive

A collaborative project between Rainbow Centre, St James' Church Kindergarten and PCF Sparkletots, conceived with the Lien Foundation, which aims to strengthen co-teaching practices between early childhood educators and early intervention teachers to enable inclusion.

Supported by:

A collaboration between:

The idea for this project was seeded when both SJCK and RC visited Finland and Canada with the Foundation in Aug 2018 and May 2019 to learn how both top performing education systems address the increasingly diverse learning needs of its students in schools.

We learnt that a strong co-teaching practice where mainstream and special educators share a unified philosophy and undergo pre-service training together enables children with moderate to severe disabilities to be included in varying degrees and attend school alongside typically developing peers from early childhood till they graduate from the formal education system.

On the other hand, such opportunities in Singapore are far and few between. A key barrier is the lack of training early childhood (EC) educators receive in working with children with special needs and the absence of early intervention (EI) professionals in a preschool setting. This has inevitably led to low acceptance and inconsistent attitudes among educators towards these children.

Collaborative teams of early childhood educators from SJCK and PCF and early interventionists from RC who will employ a co-teaching model to support children with disabilities in an inclusive setting.

Programme evaluation and continued quality implementation checks to ensure best possible outcomes for inclusion of the students and co-teaching practice for scaling.

Development of a service manual and training framework that will guide similar partnerships between early intervention centres and preschools. Training will be carried out by Rainbow Centre Training & Consultancy and involve team members of the Project.

Read how it works

MEPI works on a collaborative teaming approach that integrates expertise between the early childhood educator and early interventionist. It involves four elements:

Each student has an Individualised Education Plan (IEP) developed with inputs from parents, class teachers and the early Interventionists, with progress reviewed every 6 months

Early interventionists support children in activities where they need help in improving engagement and participation through the implementation of the co-teaching method. The activities for co teaching are identified together with class teachers and these usually allow for a degree of flexibility to design and deliver lessons and embed IEP goals.

The early interventionist supports a second individual (e.g. parent, early childhood educator) with skills and information to interact with the child. This takes place during team meetings where the EI and EC co-plan and co-review selected activities and exchange strategies, including coaching, modelling and adapting activities.

Parents are engaged formally during IEP meetings and informally through calls or whatsapp. These engagements serve as platforms to update on child’s progress and for caregivers to share out-of-school observations with the team

Defined as two or more adults planning and instructing the same group of students at the same time and in the same place, co-teaching allows opportunities for differentiated instructions and allows all students to receive additional support and direct instructions from smaller groups when necessary. It is a common model used to provide direct support to children in inclusive settings and was one of the practices extensively used in the inclusive classrooms we visited in Finland.

With true co-teaching, children perceive the co-teachers as a team, each member of which is equally in charge and play equally active roles in lesson delivery. Successful co-teaching sets the tone for how the child can be meaningfully engaged in an inclusive classroom.

Importantly, co-teaching creates a good and strong platform for capacity building, knowledge exchange and knowledge transfer-educators to learn from each other’s expertise and in turn expand the scope of their teaching capacity.

Time on Task

Facilitate Differentiation

Improved Instructions

Professional Growth

Sense of Belonging

Teacher Access