Evaluation of Education in Singapore

Education is something that humans cannot live without. In previous generations, if you did not receive a formal education, you learned how to do a skill of some sort to secure the ability to have a stable life. In modern society, we are all familiar with situations where families will move to an entirely new area to ensure that their children have an opportunity to go to a school that is considered better than the others in the community. What if a society decided to improve its entire education system? Not only improve, but what if an organization made it a priority to prepare their people through education to be the most skilled globally? Singapore is striving to be a country that accomplishes 21st-century excellence.

Less than a century ago, Singapore was a part of Malaysia. When the country received its freedom, its Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew stated, "Our priority must be to develop Singapore's only natural resource, its people (The AQI Team, 2021)". Yew set the foundation for people who saw growth as a necessity. During the early years of the country, the method by which education was provided was rigorous. The focus was "embedding a tightly specified curriculum, recruiting more, better teachers, and closely controlling standards (The AQI Team, 2021)."

Over the past sixty years, Singapore's education system has gone through many different phases. Each one of the phases focused on where the society was and continued improvement. The steps in the educational system were "survival-driven (1965–1978), to efficiency-driven (1979–1996), ability driven (1997–2010), and student-centric, values-driven (2011 onwards) (Koh, Ponnusamy, Tan, et al., 2014)." Each phase helped a distinct priority to improve the country.

Due to the country's focus, Singapore has produced some of the best PISA scores of the last decade. According to Charlotte West's article Toward Globally Competent Pedagogy, the trends they have followed have been to recruit the best teacher talent, provide continuous teacher development, and all primary students are required to learn a second language. As a result, education went from a period focusing on basic skills to striving for excellence in every area. In 2010 Singapore introduced a framework for 21cc student outcomes. The map detailed the broad areas that should be focused on in the outer layers and then listed the more concentrated areas in the internal layers. (Tan, Koh, Costes-Onishi, et al., 2017).

In the country's continued educational improvement, the minister of education, Ong Ye Knug, brought elements of the Swiss curriculum to Singapore. The curriculum was designed to help mix classwork with apprenticeships. Some tangible steps the country took to ensure the curriculum was successful was ensuring all primary schools had an applied learning program. The agenda focused on providing "nurturing creativity and innovation to prepare Singapore's children for the future (Fitzwilliams, 2018).

While excellence is expected, the method being attained has adapted over the years. An example of this evolution can be seen in the technique the Singaporean government allowed Santosa School to implement the IP program. While the ministry of education expected the students to be "stretched in academic and non-academic areas ( Koh, Ponnusamy, Tan, et al., 2014)", they gave the school the liberty to make changes to the program. What makes this interesting is that an education system that was once extremely strict now allows some schools to make changes to a curriculum and let teachers teach in their way. The study found that "strong school leadership and teacher professionalism are found to mitigate the tensions that emerged in the implementation process ( Koh, Ponnusamy, Tan, et al., 2014)". The additional freedom made it easier to be effective.

In closing, the Singaporean educational system has had many changes over the past sixty years. The primary focus has been to develop its people to be globally proficient. While initially, the government had small goals like ensuring people had basic reading and mathematical skills, the country has moved toward creating a globalized talent pool. This country has led the trend that traditional academics is not enough. Their focus has shifted toward creating a more well-rounded learner. As the world becomes smaller, Singapore aims to continue to provide the world with 21st-century learners.

Resources

Fitzwilliam, H. (2018) Singapore's Classroom Revolution. Financial Times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRgI20Vul60

Koh, E., Ponnusamy, L., Tan, L S., Lee, S., & Ramos, M. (October 2014). A Singapore Case Study of Curriculum Innovation in the Twenty-First Century: Demand, Tensions, and Deliberations. De La Salle University. https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=593fd266-a819-4184-9e7c-2be11779f8e7%40redis

Tan, J, Koh, E, Chan, M, Costes-Onishi, P, & Hung, D. (February 2017). Advancing 21st Century Competencies in Singapore. Center for Global Education. https://asiasociety.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/advancing-21st-century-competencies-in-singapore.pdf

The AQI Team. (March 2021). Singapore: Probably the Best Organized Education System in The World. Assessment & Qualification Insight. https://www.aqi.org.uk/blogs/probably-the-best-organised-education-system-in-the-world.

West, C. (2012). Toward Globally Competent Pedagogy. NAFSA Association of International Educators. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xUjHGmQrWM2ysZJ8dXPsCtr_9tx-Pew9/view