Focusing on education

Unfortunately, it was a completely different experience after the family relocated back to Singapore. When E-Ching tried to colour her favourite flower purple instead of red, as instructed, she was reprimanded by her teacher. “In the UK, learning was such a joyful experience,” laments Ng in an interview with The Edge Singapore.

This led to her founding EtonHouse International Education Group in 1995. She wanted to bring joy to the learning process by introducing creative methods that would not put pressure or boundaries on children. Twenty-four years later, EtonHouse, from its home base of Singapore, has expanded to 11 countries, including Malaysia, Japan and China. About 12,000 students from more than 60 nationalities attend its 100-plus schools.

Ng, 67, who used to work at Ernst & Young (now known as EY) as an auditor, is currently group managing director of EtonHouse. For her achievements in making EtonHouse the success it is today, Ng was named this year’s winner of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award in the education category.

She attributes part of her entrepreneurial drive to her grandmother, who started a thriving ­sesame oil business a century ago. “As a former housewife from a Chinese-educated background, I never expected that one day I would be a successful entrepreneur like my grandmother,” says Ng.

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In addition to inheriting her grandmother’s entrepreneurial spirit, Ng believes she also picked up a set of values that has served her well at EtonHouse. For one, Ng remembers how her grandmother was always kind to her employees. She provided them with four meals a day and they all ate at the same table. She was also there for them at major occasions, be it weddings or funerals. “She was like a [matriarch],” Ng recalls.

Ng brings a generous dose of empathy to the way she manages her company too. To better equip herself in this line, she signed up for a master’s degree in educational management and underwent a mandatory and arduous practicum as an assistant teacher. “I remember wearing a pretty dress to work on my first day, but came back dishevelled and exhausted after all the classroom activities,” she laughs.

That experience spurred Ng to increase the annual leave for EtonHouse teachers from 21 days to a generous 35 days. “I strongly believe in connecting with my people in order to lead them. I know just how much work goes into caring for and educating children,” she says.

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Tough but worthwhile journey

Just like most businesses, the initial years were tough. In the 1990s, when Ng and her family moved back to Singapore, she had been a housewife for 12 years. Her plan to start EtonHouse, with its non-traditional teaching methods, was fraught with uncertainties.

“Starting an inquiry-based school [back then] was a bold move, as parents did not understand the concept. At that time, schools were very instruction-based and centred around teachers. In contrast, EtonHouse’s curriculum was focused on the child’s interests and needs, not what the teacher wanted to do,” says Ng.

EtonHouse had a rough start. It registered a loss of $1 million in the first year. Despite pressure from the students’ parents to change the school’s curriculum to one that was more in line with what other schools were doing, Ng held fast to her conviction. The challenge, then, was to convince the parents too.

“I knew that skills such as rote learning and memorising would not help children in the long run to be competent and successful. So, on top of educating the children, we had to educate the parents on what was best for their children,” she explains.

When EtonHouse was first set up, it offered only a kindergarten programme that lasted four hours a day. Despite Ng’s attempts at offering discounts and other benefits, there was little demand for afternoon sessions. The school was empty half the time, incurring overheads along the way.

Ng tackled the problem by offering childcare programmes, which would result in longer operating hours and hence, more revenue. EtonHouse further diversified its offerings by adding primary and secondary school programmes in 2001, and high school programmes around 2002.

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Privileged clientele, social awareness

Over the years, the company has built up a rather premium branding in the private education sector, attracting students from privileged backgrounds. That has caused some problems. “In school, we told students to keep their toys away after playing with them, but at home, the parents would ask them to leave the putting-away of toys to their helpers. This would confuse the children, and we had to speak to the parents about having similar practices at home as in school,” says Ng.

In a sense, her insistence on such practices has a lot to do with her roots. She fondly recalls how she married “a poor man” who lived in a rented flat, emphasising how important it is for privileged children to realise that, for many people, life is a daily struggle.

Ng has made it a point to integrate community work into the school curriculum. She encourages students to give back, in one way or another, to the larger community. For example, in 2016, EtonHouse started the “Box of Joy” programme, in which students would purchase a Christmas gift for an underprivileged child of the same age when they went Christmas shopping. The response far exceeded Ng’s expectations. More than 1,000 gifts were collected and distributed to underprivileged children for Christmas.

Just last year, Ng began a pilot project targeting girls’ homes in Singapore, in which a total of 10 sessions of counselling and other activities were conducted by EtonHouse to advise and motivate the 12 girls who were part of the programme. Pre- and post-psychology tests revealed an improvement in the overall confidence levels of the girls, with EtonHouse sponsoring two girls to pursue early childhood education courses, and one even scoring an internship at the company. Ng plans to expand the programme to boys’ homes as well.

Affordability of education

At the most recent National Day Rally held in August, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the government would boost support for the early childhood education sector. The government will give preschool subsidies to families with a monthly income of up to $12,000. Previously, these subsidies were available to only families earning $7,500 or less. An additional 30,000 families will benefit from the scheme.

In addition, the government plans to increase its presence in the preschool education space as well. It plans to boost the proportion of government-supported preschools to 80% from 50% currently, which will mean more competition for private schools such as EtonHouse.

Ng says, however, that the moves by the government are an “excellent initiative”. “Small players may find it very difficult to cope, and private operators are going to have to work very hard. I do see some consolidation happening in the market as these subsidies take place, but the best player will win, as there is always going to be a demand for quality preschool education.”

Although EtonHouse has always been viewed as a “luxury school”, it has tried to be more affordable and inclusive. In 2016, the group launched Middleton International School, a more affordable education option for expatriate families. The school has the capacity for 1,000 students ranging from nursery to Grade 12.

At the moment, however, the school caters for only students up to Grade 7 and has an enrolment of around 300. Grade 8 is due to be launched in January 2020, subject to approval from the relevant authorities, and the expansion to the pre-university level is slated to take place by 2024. Ng notes that fees at Middleton are among the lowest for an international school in Singapore, ranging from $15,800 for the early years to $15,000 for Grades 1 to 5 and $17,250 for Grades 6 to 8.

Even as EtonHouse branches out into different levels of education, Ng believes its curriculum will remain its key differentiator from the competition, be it other private schools or the mainstream government schools. “We offer a holistic education and, regardless of the price, there is definitely a demand for this type of education today,” she says.

While she needs to run EtonHouse as a business, Ng insists that profits take a backseat to her customers and employees. “I always rank the children first — our decisions are centred around the [well-being] of the students; and then we take into consideration the effects on our staff. Shareholder returns and profits are always third, because if your focus is on providing quality education, the profits will come,” she says. “If your focus is on profits, you run the risk of cutting corners.”