Nancy Bartolome | May 23, 2017
Singapore has a reputation for having a top place in international rankings for its rigorous and extensive educational system. Many US universities have already established campuses in Singapore including the Chicago Business School, NYU, John Hopkins, and Duke University. Singapore also holds numerous private schools and academies that serve the population of expatriates living there.
The educational system in Singapore is changing as explained by Dr. Lim Lai Cheng, former head of the Raffles Institution and now director at the Singapore Management University. Schools in Singapore have become very competitive with more of the high middle class pushing their children even more outside of school to take enrichment classes. The children that cannot afford the extracurricular activities have to look for the enrichment through their own motivation. These changes are creating a society in Singapore that is moving away from equitable access. Government policies are now steering the students and parents away from obsession with grades and putting more emphasis on values.
According to a BBC article that appeared on the March 8, 2017 Why high-flying Singapore wants more than grades – BBC News, schools in Singapore are adopting a more holistic approach advocated by Dr. Martin Seligman, the director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The new curriculum that is being developed is focusing on family time and in educating Singaporeans to become socially responsible citizens in their community. Students are starting to work on more community service projects. The government has also created an initiative called SkillsFuture which gives Singaporeans age 25 or older an allowance of about $300 US to pursue a lifelong learning. In announcing the budget for SkillsFuture, the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugarthnam said, “we must become a meritocracy of skills, not a hierarchy of grades earned in life.”
In an article published in the Strait Times, Going beyond grades: Evolving the Singapore education system, Amelia Teng and Calvin Yang explain that by 2021, the national examination board in Singapore will no longer publish an aggregate score for students taking the PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination). Instead, they will evaluate a student’s performance on the PSLE with wider scoring bands such as A, B, C, and D in hopes of reducing the excessive stress among students and parents who just focused on the results of the final aggregate score. Students are being taught the value of expressing themselves and to develop character and life skills. The acting Education Minister of Singapore, Ng Chee Meng said in a speech to Parliament, “We want to cultivate a generation of young people who grow up with a sense of curiosity and a love for learning…asking both the ‘whys’ and the ‘why nots’.”