Republic of the Philippines 

DR. EMILIO B. ESPINOSA, SR. MEMORIAL STATE COLLEGE 

OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY 
(Masbate State College) 
http://www.debesmscat.edu.ph 
Mandaon, Masbate 
GRADUATE SCHOOL 
 Ruiz, Andrea S.
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION major in EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP 
Midyear 2021 
 
CROSS-CULTURAL, ECONOMIC, AND ENVIRONMENTAL
DIMENSIONS OF GLOBAL EDUCATION 
(EL 333) 

Reflection No. 5
 
Look for countries that are considered best in education system. Choose of the top 10 countries
and explain why it belongs to countries with best education system. What are the best practices
that country is able to do why it performs well in education? Can we adapt them in our country?
Why? 
 
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 centralized (despite
significant decentralization 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 characterized 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 emphasize 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 recognize 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. 
 
Yes, we can adapt it in our country. As long as there is consensus and agreement among the
parties involved and the system provides the technical know hows needed by all the educators.