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Singapore’s educational reforms toward holistic outcomes

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(un)intended consequences of policy layering, dennis kwek , dennis kwek center director, centre for research in pedagogy and practice - national institute of education, nanyang technological university, singapore jeanne ho , and jeanne ho senior teaching fellow at the centre for research in pedagogy and practice - national institute of education, nanyang technological university, singapore hwei ming wong hwei ming wong senior education research scientist at the centre for research in pedagogy and practice - national institute of education, nanyang technological university, singapore.

March 16, 2023

Singapore is a city-state in South-east Asia of about 710 square kilometers and inhabited by 5.64 million people of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian background. Since independence in 1965, the country’s democratically-elected government has remained politically stable, allowing for long-term education policy planning. Without natural resources, human capital development through education has been a significant policy priority over the decades, including the establishment of the sole teacher training National Institute of Education (NIE). A distinctive characteristic of the Singapore education system is the close tripartite relationship among the Ministry of Education (MOE), NIE, and Singapore schools, which enables systemic changes to spread throughout the school system and provides an ongoing avenue for feedback and continuous improvement. 1

The government centralizes policy control and infrastructures to create an efficient system, making high-quality public education available to all under the Compulsory Education Act 2000, while simultaneously decentralizing the system to develop schools into learning organizations that are continuously improving with minimal governmental intervention. In line with increased school autonomy, there was a shift from a centralized external appraisal system by a team of inspectors toward schools self-appraising with rubrics-based, formative performance measures. Education in Singapore has evolved from a focus on fulfilling economic needs and supporting students’ academic development to an increasing focus on holistic student development, including character formation, societal participation, and self-actualization. The emphasis on holistic education is also to expand educational parameters beyond cognitive abilities and academic performance to other growth areas such as physical, socio-emotional, and artistic achievements. Desired holistic student outcomes are outlined in the 1997 “Desired Outcomes of Education” and further enhanced in 2010 with the “21st Century Competencies and Student Outcomes” framework.

In the transition from economic imperatives to holistic drivers, there has been a gradual move over five policy phases (from 1965 to 2022 and beyond) toward curriculum and school diversification to cater to different students, with more autonomy given to schools to innovate their pedagogy and improve instructional quality to meet their students’ unique needs. Importantly, there has been a shift in policy rhetoric from focusing on educational structures to focusing on pedagogy and instructional quality.

The overall structural reform was the provision of multiple pathways to academic success, along with increased curriculum customization that recognizes students’ different abilities and strengths. By 2024, streaming in all secondary schools will be replaced by Full Subject-Based Banding (FSBB) to support students’ differing abilities and interests in specific subjects.

A series of reforms were also implemented to cater to students’ well-being, including the 2005 Socioemotional Learning framework, the 2007 Holistic Health Framework to encourage students to lead a healthy lifestyle, and a comprehensive Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) curriculum with provision for knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to be taught explicitly.

In brief, the five phases of educational policy reforms have seen gradual systemic shifts in four key aspects: (a) from top-down government control toward more bottom-up initiatives and increasing school autonomy for curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment; (b) from centralized direction to increasingly ecological whole-of-system innovations; (c) from teacher-proof instructional strategies to increasingly learner-centric pedagogies; and (d) from creating school access to focusing on instructional quality. Policies are layered upon one another to move the system in these desired directions. In the latest phase, “Learn for Life” (2020 onwards), the shift away from an overemphasis on academic achievement continues, with emphasis on preparing Singapore students to connect, collaborate, create and to be resilient to changing circumstances.

To shift pedagogy from being mainly didactic in nature—with emphasis on preparing students for national examination—the Singapore government recognized the need to focus on school leaders’ and teachers’ capacity building to enable new curricula and teaching practices. The school cluster structure was initiated in 1997 to enable collaboration and learning among school leaders, key personnel, and teachers. Opportunities for collaborative teacher learning are provided at different ecological levels: professional learning communities (PLCs) within schools and networked learning communities (NLCs) across schools. Beyond the education system, the Singapore government works with other ministries and community organizations, such as ethnic self-help organizations, to tackle educational equity issues.

The Singapore education system was able to adapt to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by switching to full home-based learning and subsequently blended learning. The centralized infrastructure facilitated the rapid deployment of technological resources to needy families and the existing tripartite relationship among MOE, NIE, and schools enabled the quick development of learning resources.

Ultimately, even though the official policy narrative post-1997 has been a de-emphasis on examination results and educational infrastructure to help improve the instructional quality in schools toward holistic outcomes and improved student well-being have been developed, education systems building co-exists with an alternative underlying shadow education system valued by parents who continue to chase narrow academic outcomes. Tuition and enrichment centers in Singapore constitute the shadow education system.

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• This case study is a companion to “ Transforming education for holistic student development: Learning from education system (re) building around the world ” (Datnow et al., 2022), a summary report that explores the work of building and rebuilding education systems to support holistic student development in six education systems in Singapore, Ireland, Chile, Canada, India, and the United States and in one cross-national system (the International Baccalaureate). While different in many ways, the seven systems bear remarkable similarities in their efforts to (re)build education systems—each is working in policy contexts pressing for academic quality and equity, while also facing additional incentives to support holistic student development.

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Why is Singapore’s school system so successful, and is it a model for the West?

Honorary Professor, The University of Queensland

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David Hogan received funding from the National Institute of Education in Singapore to conduct the research on which this article draws .

University of Queensland provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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For more than a decade, Singapore, along with South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Finland, has been at or near the top of international leagues tables that measure children’s ability in reading, maths and science. This has led to a considerable sense of achievement in Finland and East Asia and endless hand-wringing and head-scratching in the West.

What then do Singaporean teachers do in classrooms that is so special, bearing in mind that there are substantial differences in classroom practices between – as well as within – the top-performing countries? What are the particular strengths of Singapore’s instructional regime that helps it perform so well? What are its limits and constraints?

Is it the right model for countries seeking to prepare students properly for the complex demands of 21st century knowledge economies and institutional environments more generally? Is Singapore’s teaching system transferable to other countries? Or is its success so dependent on very specific institutional and cultural factors unique to Singapore that it is folly to imagine that it might be reproduced elsewhere?

Singapore’s instructional regime

In general, classroom instruction in Singapore is highly-scripted and uniform across all levels and subjects. Teaching is coherent, fit-for-purpose and pragmatic, drawing on a range of pedagogical traditions, both Eastern and Western.

As such, teaching in Singapore primarily focuses on coverage of the curriculum, the transmission of factual and procedural knowledge, and preparing students for end-of-semester and national high stakes examinations.

And because they do, teachers rely heavily on textbooks, worksheets, worked examples and lots of drill and practice. They also strongly emphasise mastery of specific procedures and the ability to represent problems clearly, especially in mathematics. Classroom talk is teacher-dominated and generally avoids extended discussion.

Intriguingly, Singaporean teachers only make limited use of “high leverage” or unusually effective teaching practices that contemporary educational research (at least in the West) regards as critical to the development of conceptual understanding and “learning how to learn”.

For example, teachers only make limited use of checking a student’s prior knowledge or communicating learning goals and achievement standards. In addition, while teachers monitor student learning and provide feedback and learning support to students, they largely do so in ways that focus on whether or not students know the right answer, rather than on their level of understanding.

So Singapore’s teaching regime is one primarily focused on the transmission of conventional curriculum knowledge and examination performance. And clearly it is highly-effective, helping to generate outstanding results in international assessments Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) .

The logic of teaching in Singapore

Singapore’s education system is the product of a distinctive, even unique, set of historical, institutional and cultural influences. These factors go a long way to help explain why the educational system is especially effective in the current assessment environment, but it also limits how transferable it is to other countries.

Over time, Singapore has developed a powerful set of institutional arrangements that shape its instructional regime. Singapore has developed an education system which is centralised (despite significant decentralisation of authority in recent years), integrated, coherent and well-funded. It is also relatively flexible and expert-led.

In addition, Singapore’s institutional arrangements is characterised by a prescribed national curriculum. National high stakes examinations at the end of primary and secondary schooling stream students according to their exam performance and, crucially, prompt teachers to emphasise coverage of the curriculum and teaching to the test. The alignment of curriculum, assessment and instruction is exceptionally strong.

Beyond this, the institutional environment incorporates top-down forms of teacher accountability based on student performance (although this is changing), that reinforces curriculum coverage and teaching to the test. Major government commitments to educational research (£109m between 2003-2017) and knowledge management are designed to support evidence-based policy making. Finally, Singapore is strongly committed to capacity building at all levels of the system, especially the selection, training and professional development of principals and teachers.

Singapore’s instructional regime and institutional arrangements are also supported by a range of cultural orientations that underwrites, sanctions and reproduces the instructional regime. At the most general level, these include a broad commitment to a nation-building narrative of meritocratic achievement and social stratification, ethnic pluralism, collective values and social cohesion, a strong, activist state and economic growth.

In addition, parents, students, teachers and policy makers share a highly positive but rigorously instrumentalist view of the value of education at the individual level. Students are generally compliant and classrooms orderly.

Importantly, teachers also broadly share an authoritative vernacular or “folk pedagogy” that shapes understandings across the system regarding the nature of teaching and learning. These include that “teaching is talking and learning is listening”, authority is “hierarchical and bureaucratic”, assessment is “summative”, knowledge is “factual and procedural,” and classroom talk is teacher-dominated and “performative”.

Clearly, Singapore’s unique configuration of historical experience, instruction, institutional arrangements and cultural beliefs has produced an exceptionally effective and successful system. But its uniqueness also renders its portability limited. But there is much that other jurisdictions can learn about the limits and possibilities of their own systems from an extended interrogation of the Singapore model.

At the same time it is also important to recognise that the Singapore model is not without its limits. It generates a range of substantial opportunity costs, and it constrains (without preventing) the capacity of the system for substantial and sustainable reform. Other systems, contemplating borrowing from Singapore, would do well to keep these in mind.

Reforming the Singapore model

The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s challenged policy makers to take a long hard look at the educational system that they developed, and ever since they have been acutely aware that the pedagogical model that had propelled Singapore to the top of international leagues table is not appropriately designed to prepare young people for the complex demands of globalisation and 21st knowledge economies.

By 2004-5, Singapore’s government had more or less identified the kind of pedagogical framework it wanted to work towards, and called it Teach Less, Learn More . This framework urged teachers to focus on the “quality” of learning and the incorporation of technology into classrooms and not just the “quantity” of learning and exam preparation.

While substantial progress has been made, the government has found rolling-out and implementing these reforms something of a challenge. In particular, instructional practices proved well entrenched and difficult to change in a substantial and sustainable way.

This was in part because the institutional rules that govern classroom pedagogy were not altered in ways that would support the proposed changes to classroom teaching. As a consequence, well-established institutional rules have continued to drive teachers to teach in ways that prioritise coverage of the curriculum, knowledge transmission and teaching to the test over “the quality” of learning, or to adopt high-leverage instructional practices.

Indeed, teachers do so for good reason, since statistical modelling of the relationship between instructional practices and student learning indicates that traditional and direct instructional techniques are much better at predicting student achievement than high leverage instructional practices, given the nature of the tasks students are assessed on.

Not the least of the lessons of these findings is that teachers in Singapore are unlikely to cease teaching to the test until and unless a range of conditions are met. These include that the nature of the assessment tasks will need to change in ways that encourages teachers to teacher differently. Above all, new kinds of assessment tasks that focus on the quality of student understanding are likely to encourage teachers to design instructional tasks. These can provide rich opportunities to learn and encourage high-quality knowledge work.

The national high stakes assessment system should also incorporate a moderated, school-based component that allows teachers to design tasks that encourage deeper learning rather than just “exam learning”.

The national curriculum should allow substantial levels of teacher mediation at the school and classroom level. This needs to have clearly specified priorities and principles, backed up by substantial commitments to authentic, in-situ, forms of professional development that provide rich opportunities for modelling, mentoring and coaching.

Finally, the teacher evaluation system needs to rely far more substantially on accountability systems that acknowledge the importance of peer judgement, and a broader range of teacher capacities and valuable student outcomes than the current assessment regime currently does.

Meanwhile, teachers will continue to bear the existential burden of managing an ongoing tension between what, professionally speaking, many of them consider good teaching, and what, institutionally speaking, they recognise is responsible teaching.

One of the central challenges confronting the Ministry of Education in Singapore is to reconcile good and responsible teaching. But the ministry is clearly determined to bed-down a pedagogy capable of meeting the demands of 21st century institutional environments, particularly developing student capacity to engage in complex knowledge work within and across subject domains.

The technical, cultural, institutional and political challenges of doing so are daunting. However, given the quality of leadership across all levels of the system, and Singapore’s willingess to grant considerable pedagogical authority to teachers while providing clear guidance as to priorities, I have no doubt it will succeed. But it will do so on its own terms and in ways that achieve a sustainable balance of knowledge transmission and knowledge-building pedagogies that doesn’t seriously compromise the overall performativity of the system.

It is already clear that the government is willing to tweak once sacred cows, including the national high stakes exams and streaming systems. However, it has yet to tackle the perverse effects of streaming on classroom composition and student achievement that continues to overwhelm instructional effects in statistical modelling of student achievement.

Towards a knowledge building pedagogy

Singapore’s experience and its current efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning do have important, if ironic, implications for systems that hope to emulate its success.

This is especially true of those jurisdictions – I have in mind England and Australia especially – where conservative governments have embarked on ideologically driven crusades to demand more direct instruction of (Western) canonical knowledge, demanding more testing and high stakes assessments of students, and imposing more intensive top-down performance regimes on teachers.

In my view, this is profoundly and deeply mistaken. It is also more than a little ironic given the reform direction Singapore has mapped out for itself over the past decade. The essential challenge facing Western jurisdictions is not so much to mimic East Asian instructional regimes, but to develop a more balanced pedagogy that focuses not just on knowledge transmission and exam performance, but on teaching that requires students to engage in subject-specific knowledge building.

Knowledge building pedagogies recognise the value of established knowledge, but also insist that students need to be able to do knowledge work as well as learning about established knowledge. Above all, this means students should acquire the ability to recognise, generate, represent, communicate, deliberate, interrogate, validate and apply knowledge claims in light of established norms in key subject domains.

In the long run, this will do far more for individual and national well-being, including supporting development of a vibrant and successful knowledge economy, than a regressive quest for top billing in international assessments or indulging in witless “culture wars” against modernity and emergent, not to mention long-established, liberal democratic values.

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Inclusiveness, equal access to resources: Education leaders reflect on Singapore’s education system

SINGAPORE - In other countries, where one is born – into poverty, or in a rich or poor neighbourhood – often determines one’s access to resources in schools, but it is different in Singapore, said a leader of a global federation of teachers’ unions. 

“There is that equality of funding as a baseline, so there’s no constant worry about whether you are going to have enough teachers or support,” said Dr David Edwards, the general secretary of Education International.

He was speaking to The Straits Times on April 24 about his key takeaways from the International Summit on the Teaching Profession, a gathering of education leaders focused on improving teacher quality and education standards.

Singapore, for the first time, hosted the summit’s 14th edition, which ran from April 22 to 24 at Raffles City Convention Centre.

It was attended by 140 delegates from 18 other countries, including Estonia, China and Australia, who visited Singapore’s primary and secondary schools as well as institutes of higher learning and other training institutes.

Dr Edwards recounted his visit to Si Ling Primary School in Woodlands on April 22, where he visited the school’s rooftop garden and noticed that each pupil had an iPad to assist them with lessons.

“I first thought that this school was an elite school,” he said, likening it to a high school in Beverly Hills in the United States. “But then, I realised that it was just a regular, neighbourhood school.

“Here, your zip code does not determine your destiny,” he said.

Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said, in his closing speech, that a student’s financial background should not determine his or her destiny. “Instead, the methods and focus of our education system can and should be the determinants of the outcome,” he said.

“We must ensure that students in Singapore, regardless of background, are able to rise beyond their lack of family support.”

Mr Chan said he is committed to democratising access to teaching materials and technology, ensuring that students can continue to dream big as long as they are born here.

“Our brand of meritocracy is with Singapore characteristics, which will allow each and every child to go as far as they need,” he said.

He also spoke about the need for a balanced approach to managing educational technology, along with the urgency of upskilling and reskilling teachers for future challenges.

“The fundamental principle remains, we take care of our teachers, and our teachers will take care of our children,” he said.

At the closing session, educational leaders from around the world shared their insights and commitments, including ensuring students receive adequate support and prioritising the well-being of teachers and improving their working conditions.

There was also a focus on increased international cooperation and learning from one another’s practices, with many countries committed to investing in attracting individuals to teacher training programmes and retaining teachers in the profession.

The first edition of the summit was held in 2011 by then US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and it was designed to engage governments and organisations worldwide in discussions about how to strengthen education through a stronger teaching profession.

The summit became an annual event and has been hosted by countries like the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada, Finland and Spain. It has been co-hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Education International every year.

Speaking to ST, OECD deputy secretary-general Yoshiki Takeuchi said that on top of determinants like OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, it is crucial to develop 21st-century skills like curiosity and creativity.

“Subjects like mathematics and reading are important; they are a building stone for everything, but in addition to that, education is something that would provide you with self-esteem,” Mr Takeuchi said.

He added that the visits to the various schools and institutions in Singapore made him realise that “in this country, people accept diversity”.

“People want to make sure that no one is left behind,” Mr Takeuchi said, recalling how, on a visit to Punggol View Primary School on April 24, he saw pupils as young as seven being taught the importance of accepting others.

“This sort of conviction is shared among government, teachers and everyone, so they are all looking in the same direction.”

Dr Edwards said another aspect that stood out for him was the multicultural respect and diversity he saw during his school visit, citing the example of Hari Raya decorations that had been put up. In other countries, this would be potentially controversial, he said.

He said: “You have to have a system that prioritises inclusiveness, you have to have teachers and a school leadership that believe in that, and families and communities that are a part of that, and this bodes well for the future of Singapore.”

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Singapore’s education minister outlines 2024 priorities: evolution, redefinition, and improvement.

In a bold press conference, Singapore’s Education Minister, Chan Chun Sing, underscored the necessity for continuous innovation in the education sector, despite Singaporean students’ exemplary performance in international studies. The call for evolution comes on the heels of significant changes, such as the cessation of mid-year exams and the progressive elimination of academic labels, such as Express and Normal streams.

Staying Ahead of Challenges

Chan Chun Sing enumerated three key priorities for 2024. The first among these is the imperative to avoid complacency and stay ahead of potential challenges. The minister drew a parallel with the downfall of once thriving businesses like  Xerox , attributing their collapse to a failure in anticipating and adapting to change.

Redefining Success in Education

Second, the minister emphasized the need to redefine success in education. He proposed a shift in focus from students’ scores to their ability to thrive independently in the long term. Highlighting the significance of  lifelong learning , he announced that the upcoming budget would unveil more support for adult learners. This includes financial resources, guidance on time management, and assistance with upskilling.

A Coordinated Approach in Special Education

Third, Chan Chun Sing underlined the necessity for a more coordinated approach in special education (Sped) schools. Acknowledging the complexity of special-needs education, he stressed the need for a clear career progression pathway for educators in this field. To address these needs, he announced that additional funding for Sped schools would be provided from 2024. This funding aims to increase teacher salaries and offer more professional development opportunities for key staff and leaders, in an effort to attract and retain talent, and optimize the special education system in the country.

In a related development, the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore has established the  Science of Learning in Education Centre (SoLEC) . The new center aims to make research more relevant and useful by bridging the research-policy-practice gap through a bi-directional multidisciplinary approach. This initiative signifies Singapore’s commitment to integrating the Science of Learning and Education in meaningful research endeavors, further strengthening its position at the forefront of global education.

Read the original article here . 

Source: © 2023 BNN

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Singapore tops world education list along with Asia’s Japan and South Korea, as Europe sees ‘worrying’ decline

Singapore took top ranking in the latest oecd assessment, with its students scoring highest in all 3 of the survey’s areas: mathematics, reading and science hong kong, japan and south korea also scored near the top, while levels in europe slipped at a record pace, in part to covid-19 shutdowns.

However, the report published on Tuesday also showed that students in top performing countries were not necessarily happier.

The Pisa survey is carried out every three years by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to assess the ability of 15-year-olds to meet real-life challenges.

“The Pisa 2022 results show a fall in student performance that is unprecedented in Pisa’s history,” OECD education analyst Irene Hu told reporters.

These results suggest that, on average, Singaporean students are the equivalent of almost three to five years of schooling ahead of their peers

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