Singapore’s education system suffers from two major deficiencies. One, it is unable to educate our people to meet the challenges of a 21st-century global economy which increasingly demands creativity and innovation. Two, based on the philosophy of Lee Kuan Yew and the current PAP, our schools continue to steer state resources to disproportionately benefit the elite, thus widening inequality in Singapore.
The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) presents this alternative policy paper to remedy these inadequacies and provide our nation with an education system that values our children and how they learn and grow, rather than treating them like trophies to be won at international science and mathematics competitions. We want to nurture the young mind and lead her to discover her creative self, not just teach her how to do well in examinations. We also seek to level up society by providing our students equal opportunities to excel regardless of their family background.
We do this by starting with our young ones. Education doesn’t begin when a child enters primary school; it starts at maternity and early childhood. Since our policy was published, the government has introduced a limited number of Ministry of Education (MOE) kindergartens. These have proven to be very popular as they obviously address a need which SDP identified. However, the majority of children are not covered by these MOE kindergartens to date.This inevitability creates a chasm where the well-to-do can afford expensive programmes that provide enriched learning for their pre-schoolers while a significant proportion of children from families with modest means have to stay home because their parents are unable to send them to kindergarten. Inequality starts early.
The primary school system exacerbates this gap by subjecting pupils to intense, content heavy syllabi where teachers are under pressure to complete the topics regardless of whether the students understand the material or not. Parents then seek tuition for their children to keep up with the school work. Again, richer families are able to pay for such private tutoring while the poorer families cannot afford it and are, again, further disadvantaged.
In addition, students spend much of their weekends and school holidays completing their homework assignments and revision for examinations, leaving them little time for reading and recreation—two activities essential for lifelong learning.
To overcome these challenges, the SDP proposes the following:
- Cultivate creative minds. Primary and secondary school curricula will be revised to include activities that will cultivate creativity in our students. Since our original policy proposal, MOE has introduced an Adaptive Learning System (ALS) for Primary 5 Mathematics which attempts to personalise education but its implementation has been limited to date. Similarly for the Learning for Life programs which are not all available in all schools. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is helpful, teachers are still vital. Teachers will be trained to build confidence in students, identify their strengths and passions, and facilitate the development of their creative skills.
- Do away with the PSLE. The focus of the primary school system is on the PSLE where students are trained to memorise their school work and drilled to do well in the examination. Scrapping it will allow teachers to teach and students to learn in a holistic manner. The attempt to “reduce the stress” associated with the PSLE by using achievement levels rather than T-scores merely replaces one problem with another. Children now can no longer rely on the other subjects to make up for a poor score in one subject as they could under the old T-score system. Now they have to do well in all subjects to achieve the optimum achievement levels. The PSLE needs to be done away with completely.
- Broaden curriculum, reduce workload. The number of subjects at the primary and secondary school level will be broadened to include student-collaboration projects, speech and drama, and humanities and the arts as well as enhanced digital literacy. The content of traditional subjects like mathematics and science will, however, be reduced. Such an approach will enrich the educational experience of our students and prepare them for a future that will require them to be well-rounded, intelligent individuals.
- Reduce class size. Class sizes will be reduced so that one teacher will have a class of no more than 20 students. This will enable teachers to pay more attention to the development of each of the students.
- Introduce the Dedicated-Teacher System. One teacher will be assigned to a class and he/she will take the set of students from Primary 1 to 3 before another teacher takes over from Primary 4 to 6. Giving a teacher three years (instead of only one) to teach a student, allows the teacher to acquire substantial knowledge about the student’s developmental progress. This allows the teacher more time to plan and implement relevant interventions. Such an arrangement will also provide opportunities for parents and teachers to collaborate on and facilitate the well-rounded development of the child.
- Eliminate school and class ranking. We recommended this in our original proposal and MOE has switched to full subject based banding which allows students of different abilities in various subjects to remain in their classes without being streamed. This applies only to non-IP or SAP schools and is a good but limited step. It recognises that education is not about competition with one’s classmates but learning through collaboration and teamwork with one’s peers. The competition for top-ranked schools is unhealthy and has inflicted serious psychological damage to our children. Streaming needs to be removed for all schools and just like the GEP is now being expanded to all primary schools, more schools should have the the IP option rather than a handful of elite schools.
- Nationalise pre-schools. As mentioned above, after our proposal, MOE introduced national MOE kindergartens but they are being rolled out slowly despite their popularity. All preschools in Singapore will be nationalised to ensure that Singaporean children from all walks of life have access to very low cost preschool education. In this way, the poorer segments of society will not be disadvantaged just because they cannot afford to send their children to kindergartens. This was very successfully done in the 1960s with a national primary and secondary school system and should be extended to preschools.
- 8. At the tertiary level, our university system must also ensure that a student’s financial background will not be a deterrent in his education. The SDP proposes interest-free student loans for all undergraduates to support their university fees. Loan-repayment commences only when the graduate is gainfully employed rather than at graduation which is the current case.
- For our universities to excel, this paper also proposes that our tertiary institutions should beare completely autonomous and free from state-interference; academic freedom must be sacrosanct. In addition, university leadership must be democratically elected by the faculty staff and not appointed by the government and the administration.
- Increased digital literacy for our children. We propose compulsory digital literacy courses for all primary school children so they are better equipped to decide for themselves what is accurate and what are harmful influences to avoid online. Digital skills and artificial intelligence need to be incorporated in teaching at all stages but with guidance from appropriately trained teachers. There have been attempts in many schools to incorporate IT in teaching in Singapore for years but there has not been a clear national strategy which applies to all schools and all students.
- Any nation wanting to foster an inclusive society cannot ignore the situation of children with special needs. Although the government has put in place mechanisms to include children with disabilities in our regular schools, more needs to be done. Presently, Voluntary Welfare Organisations (VWOs) still provide much of the education of special needs children. Since the publication of our report, the Transition Support for Integration (TRANSIT) program has been introduced for early primary school children. Under the SDP plan, the government will take over all special education and centralise such services with the help and support of the experienced VWOs now known as social service agencies.
In 1994, SDP Secretary-General Chee Soon Juan asked in Dare To Change: An Alternative Vision for Singapore
“...does the PAP have a clear idea of what education is, or should be, besides defining it in dollars and cents? Who is the Singaporean? What would we like to see in him or her? How should education serve the needs of Singapore? Why are Singaporeans not reading as much as their counterparts in other countries?...As long as we fail to address these issues, we will be caught in a cyclical pattern of making patchy revisions to our educational system that will lead us nowhere.”
Forty years have passed and the education system has failed to evolve in a way that enables our society to meet the challenges that loom. Observers at the US Embassy in Singapore had previously noted that
“Singapore’s education system has been criticized for being heavy on memorization and light on critical thinking and creativity. Based on the British model, the system is highly test-focused and separates students (a process referred to as “streaming”) at an early age between high, middle, and low achievers...the overall education system has changed little.”
Education must be the process where an individual learns to discover oneself and, in doing so, endeavour to improve the human condition. For the sake of our nation’s future, it is important that we teach our children that reading and learning can be enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding. We must let our children be children. They should be encouraged to read, play, discover themselves and for themselves, and develop a love for books. The goal should be to lead our students to learn, not push them to study. The former will open up their naturally enquiring minds, the latter will kill off curiosity.
The objective of our education system must be to facilitate the learning process with the ultimate aim of helping our children achieve their true potential and reach their own levels of self-actualisation. If we are able to achieve this, we will reap the benefits of not just a talented workforce but also, and more importantly, a thinking and caring people.
