It's time now to go beyond grades: Education Minister
By
Amelia Tan
SINGAPORE'S education system has been very successful at the nuts and bolts - it churns out top students, and is ranked highly worldwide - but it is now time for it to evolve.
Parents these days are more educated and demanding, while children are more questioning and learn in different ways, and the system needs to keep up with rising expectations.
It needs to do more than simply churn out students with good grades, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said yesterday in a speech at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
At the end of the day, he said, education in Singapore needs to 'nurture each child to believe in himself and be self-sufficient, to care for his fellow man, and to be able to contribute to the larger society around him'.
To turn out such students, several things are needed, Dr Ng said.
At the top of the list: Raising the number of teachers, and getting more with higher qualifications, so that more can be done to develop students.
Getting quality people will also mean schools can be given more autonomy, a critical factor which will allow school leaders to develop individual students under their care.
To tackle students' higher aspirations, Dr Ng said, some moves need to be made.
Having a fourth university is one. But beyond that, he said a way must be found to quickly upgrade the skills of polytechnic and Institute of Technical Education graduates.
Noting that a university place is akin to the Holy Grail for such students, he said this should not be the only option.
Their skills are in great demand and many already hold good jobs, but as technological cycles shorten, helping them upgrade quickly without taking time off from work is a much more efficient way of doing things, he said.
In his speech, Dr Ng also reminded his audience of 350 students and faculty that while the education system can be improved, it is already delivering the goods - something that is not always the case, even in developed countries.
The United States and Britain, for example, have seen patchy results overall, even though some of their schools are among the world's best.
Singapore, on the other hand, has a system that delivers results and is well regarded internationally, the minister said.
Pupils here can compete with the best anywhere, he added, consistently ranking highly in maths and science competitions, reading literacy skills and other measures of performance.
But more importantly, even academically weak students do better in the Singapore system compared to others.
The keys to this success, he said, are the use of English as the medium of instruction, the bilingual and streaming policies, employing quality teachers and having effective testing methods.
In particular, he cited choosing English as the official language in the 1970s - something that seems a 'no-brainer' in today's context - as a decision that prevented Singapore from veering off track.
The country could have easily adopted Chinese or Malay, but this would have led to a ' very different Singapore', he said.
However, as with everything else, there have been trade-offs: The use of English, for example, has meant Singaporeans can easily study and work overseas, giving rise to the brain drain problem.
The emphasis on testing, meanwhile, has led to complaints that there is too much stress in schools, a point raised by a member of the audience in a question and answer session after Dr Ng's speech.
Responding to such comments after the talk, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Associate Professor Scott Fritzen, said he was convinced that Singapore's public school system has, on average, outcomes that are outstanding by any measure.
'The most important lesson in my view is the need to see education sector development as a critical long-term national priority, demanding an integrated response, at the highest levels of Government,' he said.
