Established under the Private Education Act, the Council for Private Education (CPE) a statutory body with legislative power is formed to regulate the private education sector more stringently and improving the quality of delivery.

CPE will implement the Enhanced Registration Framework (ERF) which is mandatory and the Edutrust Certification Scheme which is voluntary to enhance and uplift the standards in the private education industry. (Please refer to www.cpe.gov.sg)

Enhanced Registration Framework (ERF)

The ERF will spell out the mandatory registration requirements and legislative obligations which all private education institutions must meet. The objective is to ensure that private education institutions are of a certain standard and to protect the interests of the students enrolled in the schools.

Edutrust Certification Scheme

This is a voluntary certification scheme administered also by CPE for private education institutions in Singapore.

This scheme is one of the prerequisites which private education institutions that enroll international students must meet to qualify for the issuance of student passes as stipulated by the immigration Checkpoints Authority (ICA). The objective is to differentiate better private education institutions as having achieved higher standards in key areas in management and the provision of education services.

One of the requirements under the EduTrust Certification Scheme, private education providers must adopt a Fee Protection Scheme with the CPE-appointed service providers and provide medical insurance coverage for hospitalization and related medical treatment throughout the entire course duration. The FPS is compulsory for all local and international students .FPS applies to all courses with duration of more than one month or more than 50 hours. Enrolled in The FPS varies depending on the fees of the courses insured but a minimum premium must be paid.

Private education institutions can choose to adopt either the escrow scheme, insurance scheme, or a combination of both to provide fee protection to all their students.

Cambridge Institute has put in place an insurance arrangement that ensures fees paid by students to the school are insured by Lonpac Insurance Bhd, a CPE-appointed service provider and HSBC, a CPE-appointed service provider for payments using the Escrow scheme.The insurance protection serves to protect the students' fees in the event a private education institution (PEI) is unable to continue operations due to insolvency, and/or regulatory closure. Furthermore, the FPS protects the student if the PEI fails to pay penalties or return fees to the student arising from judgments made against it by the Singapore courts.