The Ministry of Education Language Centre (Abbreviation: MOELC) is a centralised educational institution for students in Singapore’s education system to learn additional languages. There are two campuses located in Bishan and Newton, which are managed by the Ministry of Education of Singapore. Students attend the institution on top of the existing school they are attending.
Its primary purpose is to offer foreign language courses to students that will generally be their third language, within an official grading scheme reported back to their schools. However, it also teaches the Malay language as an institute where Malay can be learned as some schools do not have a Malay Department. In exemption cases, students can replace learning their mother tongue with a foreign language offered by the MOELC, as a second language is a requirement for all students in the Singapore education system.
Exemption is typically invoked if the student in question is returning from abroad and is not proficient in his or her mother tongue, or is an expatriate whose mother tongue is not one of the three “official” ethnic language groups of Singapore – namely the Malay language, the Chinese language or the Indian languages.