
Lock Road Kindergarten – Extension of Lease Petition from parents and friends of Lock Road Kindergarten


To:
Mr Christopher De Souza MP |
Mrs Cheong Koon Hean |
Mrs Thien Kwee Eng |
Ms Kow Ree Na |
Ms Audrey Wong Wai Yen |
|
Lock Road Kindergarten – Extension of Lease
Petition from parents and friends of Lock Road Kindergarten
The parents and friends of
Lock Road Kindergarten have signed this petition to request that Lock Road
Kindergarten be allowed to remain at its current location and that its lease be
extended.
Reasons for our petition - Summary
Our Lock Road community of
parents place high value on the current location of the kindergarten for a number
of reasons, including the following:
·
Parents
value the ability to access high quality kindergarten education (modelled on
the British system) for their children in the Alexandra area, where many
expatriate families live and work.
For around 10 years, Lock Road Kindergarten has provided a real sense of
security and stability for families – this would be diminished if the
kindergarten is required to move. Allowing
Lock Road Kindergarten to remain in Gilman village would contribute to the
government’s goal of making Singapore “a vibrant place to live, work,
learn and play” for the families of foreign talent.
·
Parents
value Lock Road Kindergarten’s unique natural environment, with its large outdoor
playground and outlook on natural forest.
This type of environment is not readily available at other locations and
is particularly sought after by many of our parents. We place great value on the ability of Lock Road
Kindergarten to use its natural setting to provide creative and unique learning
experiences for our children.
·
Parents believe that Lock Road Kindergarten’s
continued presence in Gillman Village would enhance the redevelopment of the
area as a creative precinct. Lock
Road Kindergarten offers a creative and artistic educational experience for our
children, which is enhanced by their access to natural play spaces available at
the kindergarten’s current location.
These reasons are explained more fully below.
Access to quality international education in the Alexandra
area
The majority of our parents
are expatriates, many of whom live and work in the Alexandra area. A key issue for many of us in deciding
whether to move to and remain in Singapore is our ability to access quality international
education for our children, at a location which is convenient to our homes and
places of work.
For 10 years now, Lock Road Kindergarten has been
the favored choice of kindergarten for expatriates in the area. Lock Road Kindergarten is one of the
very few kindergartens in Singapore which follows the British system. This provides consistency for many of our
children with their educational experiences in our home countries. It also gives our families a real sense
of familiarity and security. This
greatly helps expatriate families adapt to life in Singapore.
For many of us parents, Lock Road Kindergarten has
become an “institution” – a familiar and nurturing place where our children
feel loved and secure. Many
parents have sent successive children to Lock Road Kindergarten and have come
to rely on the stability and consistency it offers to our families. This sense of stability is very
important when you live away from your home country and it is likely to be diminished
if the kindergarten is required to move to new premises. For these reasons, we believe that allowing
Lock Road Kindergarten to remain in its current
location will contribute to the government’s goal of making Singapore a
“vibrant place to live, work, learn and play” for the families of foreign
talent.
Co-location with Gilman arts precinct
We believe that the Lock Road Kindergarten’s
continued presence in Gillman Village would be consistent with the
redevelopment of the area as a creative precinct. At the kindergarten, our children are given daily opportunities
to participate in art, craft and music activities and to experiment and
discover with hands-on equipment and materials. Children in the Mandarin
programme learn Mandarin songs and participate in cultural studies and art
activities. Children in the English
programme benefit from activities such as speech and drama, cooking, and artistic
experiments.
Indeed, for many parents of children at Lock Road,
the fact that the kindergarten nurtures each child’s creativity and places a unique
emphasis on each child’s individual expression has been a chief determinant for
selecting Lock Road as the preferred introduction to their child’s formal
education. We believe that the
creative educational offering provided by Lock Road Kindergarten would
therefore not only be consistent with but would actually enhance plans to develop Gillman Village into a creative precinct.
The importance of Lock Road’s outdoor environment
Many of our parents highly
value Lock Road Kindergarten’s unique natural environment, with its large grassy
outdoor playground and outlook on natural forest. For many of us, Lock Road
Kindergarten’s natural setting is one of the key factors in our decision to
send our children to this kindergarten.
This type of environment is not readily available at other kindergartens
in Singapore and offers many educational and developmental benefits for our
children.
We value the fact that Lock Road’s current location allows our children to spend a considerable part of each day outside the classroom, learning through unstructured free play, as well as structured activities held outdoors. Our children get to explore the natural world around them – learning about wildlife, plants, water and the weather. In addition, our children are regular visitors to areas in the local neighbourhood, such as Hort Park and the Southern Ridges forest walk, which helps foster a love of Singapore and its wonderful attractions. All these benefits will be lost if the kindergarten’s lease can not be extended.
Lock Road Kindergarten – Extension of Lease
Petition from parents and friends of Lock Road Kindergarten
We, the undersigned,
support the petition by Lock Road Kindergarten’s parents and friends to extend the
kindergarten’s lease so that it may remain in its current location.
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